Write Better

An English language grammar checker for Google docs. A.K.A the chrome extension port of Btford's WriteGood which is a bundling of different naive English language linters. I checked for grammatical errors on this README using WriteBetter ;)

Features

Works Offline: It comes packaged with all the resources needed to parse text, generate and display suggestions on Google docs and under 100Kb in size! See how to inspect requests made by chrome extensions if you're curious about what data other extensions are sending or requesting.
Privacy First: The texts of your Google docs are never uploaded to a remote server or stored locally. All analysis happen offline and on demand in the browser. See what can go wrong when extensions make copies of your data.
Open Source: You can browse the code here, modify and build it yourself. It is a stringing of existing open source language libraries. See the list of libraries used.
It's Free!: Sorry I needed to include this given that it costs about $20 to get a pro paper review on services like Fiverr or Grammarly.

Upcoming features:

Multi-Language Support: Would allow users to run the checker on any language for which there is an open-source checker, like Schrieb-gut for German.
Controlled Annoyance: Grammar checkers always need to deal with false positive suggestions - it's the nature of English. Goal is to allow user to control confidence level of suggestions to display.
Other Writing Surfaces: At the moment, the extension is only activated on https://docs.google.com. Generalizing it to other writing surfaces like email would require a bit more effort.

Build the extension locally

Download the repo

git clone http://github.com/justiceo/write-better

Install dependencies

cd write-better && npm install

Build the extension

gulp build

Extension directory would be in write-better/extension. See how to load an unpacked extension in chrome.

Demo it (starts new browser instance with extension installed)

npm run start:firefox
npm run start:chrome

Other tasks

Test the extension

gulp test

Start the build in live-reload mode

gulp

Create a release-able extension

git checkout -b release                         # Not necessary but preferable.
gulp clean                                      # Remove any artifacts from old builds and watch
gulp build                                      # Build the extension
zip -r extension.zip extension -x "*.DS_Store"  # Zip it up and upload to chrome dashboard.

To create .crx file (ensure previous .crx is removed first), use:

google-chrome --pack-extension=extension  [--pack-extension-key=<extension_key>]

Debugging

Content script can be located in Chrome Devtools -> Sources -> Content Script. Ensure Console output level is VERBOSE
Background script can be located in Manage Extensions -> (Find loaded extension) -> Background page.
After a rebuild, reload extension using reload button on the extension card at chrome://extensions/

PRs to track

After which: update btford/write-good's dependencies.

Feedback

The only way I get feedback is when people complete this anonymous form or leave a review/comment on the extensions page. Please use them!

Release Notes

v0.0.7

Fix extension not working on large documents.
Severally performance improvements and bug fixes.

Responsive Running lines counter, best implementation from https://stackoverflow.com/a/37623987

function countLines(target) {
      var style = window.getComputedStyle(target, null);
      var height = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("height"));
      var font_size = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("font-size"));
      var line_height = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("line-height"));
      var box_sizing = style.getPropertyValue("box-sizing");
      
      if(isNaN(line_height)) line_height = font_size * 1.2;
     
      if(box_sizing=='border-box')
      {
        var padding_top = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("padding-top"));
        var padding_bottom = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("padding-bottom"));
        var border_top = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("border-top-width"));
        var border_bottom = parseInt(style.getPropertyValue("border-bottom-width"));
        height = height - padding_top - padding_bottom - border_top - border_bottom
      }
      var lines = Math.ceil(height / line_height);
      alert("Lines: " + lines);
      return lines;
    }
    countLines(document.getElementById("foo"));

doc-han/write-better