How many here have seen the link Kalmbach e-mailed just before noon yesterday, announcing the new ‘integrated Web experience’ for all the train-related Kalmbach sites that is coming “fall 2020”? I believe there is a way to experience and test-drive the features (you have to ‘log in’ again and I don’t know if that is actually part of the demonstration so I haven’t actually done that).
Apparently all the little differences between, say, the MR site configuration, the Classic Trains site, and the Trains Magazine site are all going to be resolved, although I don’t see many of the features of importance, such as the simple ‘search the community’ bar, in the new interface. Hopefully I’m wrong about the features or the configuration options being potentially crippled, and I’m glad to see in particular that mobile-device support, so long officially deprecated, is once again something they plan to feature (if the little advertising sequence showing a phone as one of the supported device classes is not merely wishful animation).
I cannot paste the link in the e-mail here for you all to test directly; I trust someone will supply it in clickable form ASAP.
I hope in particular that the resident bug on the Kalmbach forums, particularly manifesting here in the MR forum, which relatively frequently locks up my phone browser page with “Virus detected on iPhone!” and “you’re the one-billionth winner” style crapware, will not be a feature of the new and improved forum, whatever it turns out to be…
This amazes me. When I create a new topic in the forum, there is spell-check in the title bar section, but not the body section.
How did this happen.
I hope the forums stay pretty much the same in the new Kalmbach Media web format. Maybe a little more easy for newcomers to find and become part of the community.
All I care about are all the little things that have been broken for a long time you kinda expect in 2020, like spellcheck, working message notifications, and maybe more modern image handling.
Unfortunately for us Canadians, spellcheck will be mis-spellcheck for those of us using proper English spelling…it is, after all, the “English” language, while some “American” spelling doesn’t quite cut it for me, especially the mis-use of the otherwise non-existent “zee” - pronounced similar to “cee” when used individually, but unnecessary otherwise. [swg]
Most of the books I read are published/printed in the UK, so I have become used to the “proper” English spellings of a lot for certain common words, and tend to use them interchangeably when typing.
Depending on your browser you can choose “English (Canadian)” as your language preference. Spell check does not live inside M-R forum rather your browser choice.
Also, you have the option of adding words, so when I type “coupler” and it comes up as unrecognizable in spellcheque you can right-click it and add it to your dictionary.
I happen to use Chrome and here are options for changing your language preference:
Yeah, I’ve done that, listing my preferences in-order, from Canadian English, to British English, then American English - it works properly sometimes, but not always.
I was educated in the old Calvert System out of Baltimore, but at 14K’ in the Andes, until the end of Gr 8. We repatriated in 1966 for a number of reasons, whereupon I was immediately ensconced in Canadian English (the real English). Perforce, I had to adapt quickly or be repeatedly dinged by S/HWMBO. So, you see me using program/programme, modeling/modelling, and abote instead of abow-t. Hey, it could be worse; I could be from Hog Town and say abaywt.[(-D]
Technically, single quote marks are used to denote a quoted phrase within a quote. As an English schoolboy I was taught that to be correct.
I would be surprised to see only single quotation marks used otherwise. Except the book I made currently reading “The Mirror and the Light” does indeed do that, single quotes everywhere…hmmmm.
As for Canadians using the Queen’s English rather than American that is getting pretty patchy possibly due to the effect of Word.
I like to say that I am, as a Canadian, bi-lingual. We eschew the melting pot theory of immigration and assimilation. We are many peoples living under multiple ethnicities. Heck around 20% of Canadians form one large ethnic block making extensive of their native language (which technically is the oldest and most correct form of French extant, due to the Revolution occurring only after the British arrived) I speak (and understand) both English and broken
English by its very nature is adaptable. If there is no word for something in english then a native word can be used and it by defalt is english if you ignore its history. If you follow modern english adaptaions you will find that casa and house can both be used and most will understand. Proper english, I dont think so, never saw a Canadian say bumpershoot, they say umbrella just like we do in the states. If I remember right they do say petrol instead of gasoline.
Without the link, there is not much to see as I didn’t get the email. I don’t have to leave the US to find that people put their groceries in sacks, not bags and have pop, not soda, with their ginders not subs and it’s yins, not y’all.
It’s not so much that there’s not a spell checker, it’s that whatever the forum does for the message entry screen totally blocks the spell checker that every browser has these days. Not a problem sending replies to email Groups I am on, and even the PM editor on here - the spell checker works! Nothing Kalmbach can do, but I’d LOVE to have the actual developers of this forum software explain how one message editor screen can have a spell checker and another doesn’t. Why ion the heck would you write two different pieces of code to perform the same function?
BTW - I am a top notch speller. My problem is my brain works a WHOLE lot faster than I can type. Which is typically with 2 fingers, one on each hand. There have been times when I have types without closely watching the keyboard and it loosk liek some sort of code - because I was off a line to the left or right so EVERY letter is the one next to the one I thought I was hitting. Never did learn to touch type, and at this point, never will.