Spell check slows down editor - disable it for all users?

RStudio IDE
#1

The live spell checker in RStudio Server causes large scripts to be impossible to edit. Code folding and moving the cursor causes lags of 30 seconds or more (in Firefox) with a 5000 line script.

Does anybody know how to disable the spell checker by default, so that administrators don't have to advise every new (or existing) user to disable spell checker to allow them to edit their scripts?

For anybody stumbling across this trying to find out why their rstudio-server editor is unusable, freezes, causes messages like "this page is slowing down your browser", do the following:

  • In the Rstudio browser window, select the menu Tools | Global Options...
  • Select Spelling from the left hand panel
  • Under the section Checking , uncheck Use real time spell-checking
  • Click OK

Now I know this, great, but I'd like to prevent the spell checker from being enabled by default, or to prevent it from checking .R files. Does anybody know how I can set this at the server level?

#2

I haven't done this myself, but I found you this material :
RStudio 1.3 Preview: Configuration and Settings - RStudio

Administration and the XDG Standard

If you’re an administrator of an RStudio Server, you can establish defaults for any setting by using a global set of user preferences, placed here:

/etc/rstudio/rstudio-prefs.json

as a humorous aside, I would forego disabling the spellcheck figure globally, and rather leverage the pain of slow spellcheck for long codefiles, as a punishment on my colleagues who dare to create monolithic run on code files...

#3

On rstudio-server, I see the rstudio-prefs.json file is created in each user's home directory. Is the only way to set defaults to create this file from a template when the user is created? Or can I set this globally using one of the existing conf files?

  • /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
  • /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf

For anybody else looking, the setting to add to the json file is:

    "real_time_spellchecking": false
#4

And @nirgrahamuk - re: you point about massive files. Yep, I could try that. But sometimes a PhD (or two) trumps my self taught (over a couple of decades) technology opinions. Plus, I'd get told that it is too painful to split the files up, because it is impossible to edit them in the IDE. Chicken and egg...

Frankly, the editor seems untested with large files. It might be expected to slow down, but not prevent any kind of operation on what is probably a common use case for people that aren't professional coders.

#5

I would have thought you could set it globally under etc rstudio rstudio-prefs.json

Rstudio does have a public facing bug/issue tracker. If you will be able to provide a reproducible example, it might be that they could investigate the spell check performance :
Issues · rstudio/rstudio (github.com)

#6

This topic was automatically closed 21 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

If you have a query related to it or one of the replies, start a new topic and refer back with a link.