Bug in contextual menu on misspelled words

When control-clicking/two-finger-clicking on a misspelled word, TaskPaper gives contextual menu options based on the letter that is clicked on, not the whole misspelled word (attached image below). This is in the latest version (Version 3.0 Preview (166))

This is the typical behavior I am seeing, but the app will intermittently switch to correctly giving a menu based on the whole word. I have not managed to reliable recreate the conditions that cause the app to start correctly using the whole word, or the conditions that make it switch back to only using the clicked letter.

This issue is not seen on correctly spelled words, in my experience. Also selecting the whole word manually before control-clicking gives the correct menu based on the whole word, but that is obviously not the desired behavior.

General note: fantastic update. I used it for about 30 minutes before buying a license. Looking forward to 3.0 release version!

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Is anyone else seeing this problem? Scott, have you come any closer to figuring out what makes the behavior switch? So far in my testing things seem to be working normally.

I hadn’t, but with a little more poking around, I just figured out how to recreate it. The incorrect behavior seems to be triggered after dismissing a spelling-autocorrect popup (the bubble-like popup that comes in the flow of typing and has the small “x” dismiss button). And it gets reset back to the correct behavior by quitting and relaunching TaskPaper.

So, give this sequence a try:

  • Misspell a word that autocorrect will give you a popup for (I’ve been using tezt, which immediately gives “test” as an option.
  • Do not use the popup suggestion, and instead dismiss it (i use esc key, not the “x” button, in case this makes a difference for recreating the behavior).
  • Now control-click on the misspelled word – it should produce a contextual menu based on the particular letter you clicked on, instead of the whole word.
  • Save the document and relaunch TaskPaper.
  • Control-click on the misspelled word again – it should now produce the correct contextual menu based on the whole word.

As a bit of background, in case it is useful, this is not an edge case for my uses and may bot be for others. I like autocorrect to be on (not a great typist), but frequently use scientific names (I’m a biologist) that autocorrect wants to correct to almost random things. I therefore dismiss the autocorrect options in these cases and then run into this bug if I go back to the word to use some contextual menu option, which I frequently do (to tell my dictionary to “learn” it, etc. etc.).

Hope this helps.

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I did a quick test and I can reproduce this, however, the weird behaviour ONLY happens on the misspelled word. If I continue to type and then try on a new word, I can select the entire word without having to quit TP. The previously misspelled word however retains that odd behaviour.

I’ve just taken another look at this and can reproduce it now by following your instructions. It appears to be a bug in the underlying text system, I see the same problem in Apple’s TextEdit app that ships with OS X. But I don’t see it in other places that don’t use the standard NSTextView control… so not a problem in web forms and Pages.app.

I’m still trying to understand the source of the underlying bug to see if it’s something that I can fix.

Ok, I think I hacked my way around this. Should be fixed in the next release.