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Comment by fiatjaf | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it is crazy. For these cases we shouldn't be using SaaS at all. Installed applications can still be useful, I guess.

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Anything you can recommend that integrates with a browser but runs locally and check grammar and spelling mistakes?

I've not found time to try any of them yet so I can't comment on how they compare to Grammarly, but there are F/OSS alternatives.

https://languagetool.org/ for one supports running your own instance of the server-side portion out-of-the-box. You could run it truly locally assuming your device is appropriate, or your own server which might be more flexible as you can support a greater range of devices and share custom dictionaries between them.

> This extension will check your text by sending it to https://languagetool.org over an encrypted connection. Your text will not be stored.

Gives me a "privacy policy", "continue and don't ask again" or "cancel" hyperlink, nothing else. If I want to use it the first time.

But if you open the extension options under the "more tools" > extensions tab you can set the LanguageTool API server URL[0].

Going to try to setup a server over the weekend, thanks.

[0]: http://wiki.languagetool.org/http-server

A quick Google search and I found https://grammark.org/dist/#/ which could be incorporated into a Chrome extension.

I put "teh game is a art" into this one and it told me there were no problems with the writing.

Your browser can do spellcheck...

It doesn’t detect the passive voice, punctuation errors, or tense mismatch. While spelling catches many, it doesn’t catch them all.

That sounds more like you need to work on your grammar. One should be able to do those things on their own

I, for one, don’t really care if someone has written to me in the passive voice. Or is changing tense. The message is still received. If it will mean they are more secure that way, then I will allow it.

Ok, but others want to correct those issues,and are specifically asking for ways to do so that don't require sending all typing away to a third party.

> Your browser can do spellcheck...

Yes... But your browser won't detect "spellcheck do can browser your"

Grammar is more than just spelling.

Your brain. If you offload too many tasks to computers, those skills will weaken.

> Your brain.

Trying I promise, even different languages. But I'm not a native speaker and a bit dyslexic.

So someone or thing looking over my shoulder would be nice.

I highly recommend friends and family as proofreaders.

But our brain logs our keystrokes!

It doesn't. How many times haven't colleagues asked, 'how did you do that in vim?' Only for me to stutter and literally having to repeat the command while looking at the keyboard?

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