The spellchecker “After the deadline” is now available as an add-on for TinyMCE in Plone. It’s multilingual, open-source, platform agnostic and even does grammar checking.
I’ve actually already added this add-on two months ago but didn’t get around to mentioning it. After the deadline is an open-source spelling and grammar checker that can be integrated with web based WYSIWYG editors, such as our beloved TinyMCE.
This new spelling checker provides some advantages over the existing (and still default) IESpell. Firstly, IESpell only works on Microsoft Windows. Secondly, IESpell is only free for non-commercial purposes. After the deadline however is open-source (GPL license, see here) and platform agnostic. Oh, and it’s multilingual as well! To top it off… the killer feature, for us at least, is that it has a grammar checker. Pretty impressive IMHO.
The actual thing doing the spellchecking, is a Java server app, which you should download and install on your own server. There is a public default option for testing and demonstration purposes, but it comes with no guarantees.
After the deadline is included with all Products.TinyMCE releases since 1.2.1, but it’s not the default spell checker. To enable it is at least straightforward.
Enabling AtD in TinyMCE for Plone:
- Go to the Plone control panel and click on “TinyMCE Visual Editor”
- Click on ‘Toolbar’ (middle left)
- Make sure that ‘spellchecker’ is checked.
- Click on ‘Libraries’ (top right)
- Under Spellchecker plugin to use, choose After the deadline
- Under AtD Service URL, choose your ATD server’s URL. (The default is their - public service)
- It’s however recommended that you install your own AtD spellchecker service
- See here for more details.
- You should now have After the deadline enabled and have a spellcheck button in your TinyMCE editor.
If you’d like a demonstration of ATD, click here.
