The stuff of Kryton

An eclectic selection of technology with some cookery


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Dyslexia - Text editor tips

This page is looking at text editors of various operating systems and how to configure them to have spell checkers, white on black text (often called Dark mode) and change the font to something more friendly. This is aimed at those writing code & want spell checked comments.

Desktop editors

The following text editors are

Notepad++ (Windows)

install

winget install Notepad++

set up spelling

Plugins -> Plugins Admin -> search “spell” -> tick “DSpellCheck -> Install

click Yes

Windows admin approval

Plugins -> DSpellCheck -> Settings -> Change Current Language -> Download Languages…

Tick the Language(s) of intrest

Install Selected

Plugins -> DSpellCheck -> Settings -> Change Current Language -> confirm its set to the required language

Set up dark mode

Settings -> Preferences -> Dark Mode -> Enable Dark mode

Change font

Settings -> Style Configurator… -> Global Styles -> Global override -> Enable global font

Set the font to your preference.

Emacs (cross platform)

I started to look at setting up emacs with spell checkers and diffrent fonts and it’s quite involved and worthy of a separate page should I ever get around to doing it.

TextMate (Mac OS)

Install

From the command line using homebrew

brew install –cask textmate

Spelling

Uses the operating systems tool, to enable:

Edit -> Spelling > -> Check Spelling While Typing

Dark mode

uses Operating system preference by default

Font change

Change here:

View -> Font > -> Show Fonts

Mobile editors

I’m focusing on iOS / iPad devices here as I don’t personally run any Android devices. See my thoughts on operating systems

Pretext (free version)

Theme and spell checker default to the system standards unless you buy the pro version. I.E. Uses DarkMode if the device is set to that, uses the Operating system spell checker. Not aware of any ability to change the font although it is not a bad sans serif.

Technically it does lack file support for coding as it only appears to support mark down (.md) and text files (.txt). This site is mastered in mark down hence including it.

Textastic

Very configurable but no real spellchecker support so a poor choice in my opinion.

Set up spelling

Just Autocorrection when typing.

settings (cog ⚙️) -> Code Editor -> Keyboard-> Autocorrection

Font

settings (cog ⚙️) -> Code Editor -> Font -> OpenDyslexicMono if installed

Dark mode

settings (cog ⚙️) -> UITheam -> Dark (or System if your phone is set to Dark)

Working Copy

Not an editor as such but includes a very good one so worthy of note. It’s actually a git client so if your editing code chances are it will be in a git repository. It has lots of formats it can keyword highlight and even preview files such as mark down. To my knowledge it lacks a spellchecker so is not currently a viable option.

Changing font

In the editor, in the top right hand corner of the screen you will see the word “Plain text”, “C#”, “Hexadecimal”… tap this then “Font:”. Gives you the option import fonts.

Dark mode

Defaults to the system option, can be over ridden in the systems options if needed.

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