Can anyone clarify the way in which Scrivener 2.1’s “Correct spelling errors as you type” option works under Lion?
I have the Lion autocorrect option disabled (I hate it), but it still pops up its word completion box in Scrivener unless I also disable Scrivener’s own autocorrect option. I was more than happy with the way Scrivener used to handle autocorrect — has Scriv 2.1 been changed to deploy the irritating Lion autocorrect feature now, or am I seeing something else at play here…?
Scrivener uses the standard OS X text system, so any changes in the text system automatically feed into Scrivener. In this case, Apple have changed the way the auto-complete pop-up works, so yes, you would need to turn that off as well if you don’t want it. I can’t remember offhand how it works (I’m on Snow Leopard at the moment as I currently have to switch between both systems - it’s not possible to build Scrivener on Lion and support anything below Leopard) - I thought you still had to hit the Esc key to bring up suggestions, but maybe not - they have been making everything more iOS-like.
All the best,
Keith
OK, that makes sense, although it’s a shame, since the Lion implementation is horrible…
Out of curiosity, is it correct that Scriv 2.1 still keeps the feature active when it’s disabled in the OS but still enabled in the app?
It should only be active if “Correct spelling as you type” is ticked in the Auto-Correction preferences in Scrivener - that overrides the OS X preference, which is just a blanket preference for things like TextEdit.
Still using 10.6, and I’ve found that I seem to have turned off the autocorrect and autounderline for one particular project. Do you have any idea how this might have happened, or how I can turn it back on? I can see that the functionality is still present in other projects, just not the one I need it for. 
I don’t remember if this triggers auto-correct as well in SL, but if you’ve just got one project that isn’t underlining as you type, then check the Edit/Spelling and Grammar/Check Spelling While Typing option. That’s project specific, and the shortcut is Cmd-, which is conceivably something that could get hit by accident.
I’m in the opposite position of the OP. I’m now so used to Lion’s autocorrect behaviour (I know, probably not good) that I now find it a pain having to go back to manually correct words with typos on them. I’ve tried unticking the ‘check spelling as you type’ option but that made no difference. In TextEdit I have ‘check spelling as you type’ option ticked and the iOS style autocorrect still works. Is there any way to get Lion’s new autocorrect working in Scrivener?
I think you need to make sure that both “Correct spelling errors as you type” is selected in the Auto-Correct preferences and “Check Spelling While Typing” is ticked in the Edit > Spelling and Grammar menu (if that’s not ticked, spelling correction won’t kick in, I believe).
Hope that helps!
All the best,
Keith
This was the bit I didn’t have happening. Thanks once again. Now my Scrivener experience in Lion (on my new MacBook Air) is complete.
I am really struggling with getting check spelling as you go to function correctly. In new projects it works fine, but after I’ve been working on a project for awhile, the feature seems to go away and stop functioning after awhile. This has happened on multiple projects. There is most definitely a bug here, but I can’t, for the life of me, identify the culprit (trigger). I have all the spell check settings enabled in my preferences. Like I said, it works when I first start a new project, but eventually disappears. This is very frustrating!!
Unfortunately, as spell-checking is all handled by Lion and there isn’t a single line of code in Scrivener that handles it aside from on/off (which only ever gets called from the menu or preferences), so any bug here is almost certainly an OS X one, I’m sorry to say.
All the best,
Keith
I also seem to have turned off the Autocorrect feature and don’t know how to get it back. I was playing around with the program and think I entered ScriptWriting mode briefly – not sure if this might have caused the change. But while I changed the fonts back to my default formatting, autocorrect – such as changing two hyphens to a dash or using smart quotes – is not working.
Smart quotes and hyphens can be turned on or off via Preferences > Auto-Correct. However, they are set differently for scriptwriting mode, so if you are in scriptwriting mode, they may not be turned on. You can tell if you are in scriptwriting mode for any particular document (it is remembered per-document, so you need to turn scriptwriting on or off for each document) by the fact that the icon is slightly different (yellowish with three hole punches) and, instead of a word count, you see “General Text” in the footer bar. You can go to the Formatting > Scriptwriting menu to turn scriptwriting on or off.
Hope that helps.
All the best,
Keith