it is me

I already posted (in my looong diary post) that I’d like to turn off spell checking globally on Mac OS X. Googling didn’t really help - I found links that explained how to disable the spell checker service. But when doing like they tell, several applications complained that they couldn’t contact the spell checker service (via a dialog box) which is even more annoying than the red lines under words. In fact, Camino prompted me like “could not contact spell checker [OK]” for EVERY WORD I wrote, which I found out when using a pastebin service

So, here’s my sweet solution. How it works: It tells the spell checker that it should check spelling, but for NO language. It works like deleting all the NSLanguages parameters in its Info.plist. If you know what you’re doing, you can edit /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist yourself (NSLanguages is an array in Services » Item 1 – or use my edited Info.plist, see paragraph below) - if not, I’ll assist you a little bit.

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First, download my edited Info.plist. Then, open a Terminal window (Applications » Utilities » Terminal) and type the following:

sudo mv /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist.bak

Hit return and you will be prompted for your password. Don’t be confused of no characters appearing after the prompt, just type your password and hit return again. Paste the following into the terminal window now:

sudo cp

Insert a space and then drag the Info.plist you just downloaded on your terminal window. Type another space, then insert the following:

/System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist

Your line in the Terminal window should now look like this:

sudo cp /Users/YourUserName/Downloads/Info.plist /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist

(the string that appeared when you dragged the file onto the terminal window might look different) - Check if you didn’t forget a space, then hit return again. Eventually, you may be asked for your password again, but don’t worry if not, that’s all right, too.

Finally, type

sudo killall AppleSpell

and you’re done!

Hope somebody’s lucky with that,

Xjs.