Motivation: Enable normie grammar check in Sublime Text in (Arch) Linux environment.
One of the many obstacles in my writing endeavours is I get distracted by resolving other problems, often ideological. As I grew older, I realized that job done badly is still better then job not done at all. (Readers kindly note it only work for some problems. e.g. badly built house still provides some degree of shelter, whereas bothedheart surgery teminates a life, that might have lasted a bit longer without intervention.) My previous setup was to write my scripts in my browser, using Notion and in my browser I was using LanguageTool for grammar chcking. While this is workable sulution for normies, I experienced poor performance on some of my machines with this setup, among other issues.
Today I managed to get my new setup running, but it introduces a new workflow, that I have to note, which I am noting here.
Prerequisites:
- Installation of Arch linux (never fear if you’re a normie, I used install script myself and there’s plenty of video tutorials - Mental Outlaw) - I am sure any other Linux distros will do, you’ll just have to get the software with different commands
- Sublime Text installed
How to add a LanguageTool to Sublime text
- Step 1: Install the package using command “sudo pacman -Sy languagetool”
- Step 2: During the installation process choose “jre17-openjdk-headless” (this is a newest LTS version at the time of writing)
- Step 3: Open Sublime text and follow instructions from here (mirrored below): Installation
If you’re using Package Control then open up the command palette (ctrl+shift+p), type “install”, press Enter then type “languagetool” and press Enter again.
To get the latest updates before they get released, “install” via Package Control: Add Repository. This will update your plugin with new commits as they are being pushed to the repo.
- Step 4: Use this quick guide to hit the ground running:
- Run a language check (ctrl+shift+c). Any problems identified by LanguageTool will be highlighted.
- Move between the problems using alt+down (next) and alt+up (previous).
- A panel at the bottom will display a brief description of the highlighted problem and suggest corrections if available.
- Begin typing to correct the selected problem or press alt+shift+f to apply the suggested correction.
- To ignore a problem, press alt+d.
- Auto-correcting a problem or ignoring it will move focus to the next problem.
Edit: 30/04/2024
The damned thing no longer works. I can’t be bothered to fix it. Life’s too short to fiddle with software that refuses to work.