LanguageTool

LanguageTool is the secret weapon for producing error-free texts in different languages. Personally, I’m at war with many a grammar rule and am glad when the machine warns me before it gets embarrassing 😅

However, I believe not everything I wrote needs to be sent to a service that is great, but not under my control.

So here are some tips to set up and use an appropriate server yourself.

Setting up your own server

The easiest way to set up your own server is via Docker. This package offers itself: erikvl87/languagetool. And this is how it is loaded and started:

docker pull erikvl87/languagetool
docker run -d --restart unless-stopped -p 8010:8010 erikvl87/languagetool

Great, now the server can be reached at http://example.com:8010. There is more background information at https://dev.languagetool.org/http-server

Use in Visual Studio Code

The extension LanguageTool Linter provides all necessary functions to work with LanguageTool. Here the server URL can be entered now. The editing of texts and Markdown becomes much more comfortable.

The following adjustments to the settings have proven useful:

{
  "languageToolLinter.external.url": "http://example.com:8010",
  "languageToolLinter.hideDiagnosticsOnChange": true,
  "languageToolLinter.hideRuleIds": true,
  "languageToolLinter.lintOnChange": true,
  "languageToolLinter.lintOnOpen": true
}

Use in Firefox

There are numerous plugins available for browsers and other apps, see https://languagetool.org/#plugins. In the Firefox extension, you can enter your own server under “Experimental settings (only for advanced users)”. The URL must be added to the version path, in our example: http://example.com:8010/v2/.