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SPELLIT.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER JUNE 1990
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^SPELL IT!
^^^^^^^^^^^reviewed by Charles Good
^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group
A few months ago I wrote an article about dedicated
spell checking computers such as the Franklin Spelling Ace.
I still think these devices are useful for single word
checking as a document is created, and recommend their use.
With the recent release of Asgard's SPELL IT!, we now have a
really useful whole document spell checker that can be used
with Funnelweb or TI-Writer. Having used the Dragon Slayer
spell checker, and the WriterEase dictionary, I can say
without reservation that Asgard's SPELL IT! is superior to
the other two spell checking programs available for our
computers.
The Dragon Slayer spell checker has a small main
dictionary, only 20000 words. It is eternally slowwwww in
checking a document. Once spelling errors in a document are
corrected by Dragon Slayer, you usually have to load the
document into Funnelweb and reformat the whole thing
paragraph by paragraph. This is because Dragon Slayer
splits lines each time a correction is made. The result of
each spelling correction is an INSERT without a subsequent
REFORMAT.
The main problem with the 50000 word WriterEase
dictionary is that you have to use it with WriterEase.
WriterEase only works in 40 columns and does not have all
the little TI-Writer word processing enhancements found in
Funnelweb. WriterEase is really no better than the original
TI-Writer except that it comes with a spell checking
dictionary. My main complaint about WriterEase is that you
can't load it from ramdisk or hard drive. The WriterEase
disk is ultra protected, and you must use the original
system disk (it can't be copied) only in DSK1. What a pain!
Another problem with the WriterEase dictionary is that the
user dictionary it creates uses up enormous amounts of disk
space. I don't know why, but you only get three or four
words in each disk sector of the WriterEase user dictionary.
SPELL IT! consists of the program and several separate
dictionaries. It is unprotected, so you can put the program
on a ramdisk or hard disk. HOWEVER, the version 1.05
(revised from the initially released v1.01) that I have only
works if you put the word list dictionaries themselves on
floppies or a hard drive. I have the SPELL-IT! program on
my Horizon, but due to space limitations on the Horizon I
run the dictionary word lists off of a DSDD floppy. The
addendum that came with v1.05 states that "The program now
functions well with the HFDC and all RAM-disks (except,
apparently, the Horizon RAM disks under some
configurations)." This is a rather important "except". As I
understand it, the latest versions of ROS have problems with
SPELL-IT! dictionaries. An attempt is being made by the
software author, Jim Reiss, to correct this problem and an
updated version is expected soon. Before you purchase SPELL
IT!, check with Asgard about the current state of Horizon
ramdisk.
When you first run SPELL-IT!, you are asked for the
drive number and name of a DV80 text file. All word
processors written for the 99/4A can, and usually do,
create text files of this type. SPELL-IT! then scans the
document and develops a "unique word list" of all the
different words in the document. In creating this list,
SPELL-IT! ignores punctuation, capitalization, single
letters, numbers, and format commands (words that begin with
a period). Next, SPELL-IT! compares each of the unique
words to the words found in its 19 dictionary word lists
and your USER dictionary word list. All of this document
scanning and word list comparison takes place in one
continuous operation without user intervention, unless it is
necessary to swap dictionary disks. A 20 page document
probably doesn't have 10 times as many unique words as a 2
page document. The same words tend to be repeated in any
text. Thus, it doesn't take SPELL-IT! 10 times as long to
check the 20 page document, compared to a 2 page document.
The SPELL-IT! program is supposed to recognize common
plurals as well as "ed" and "ing" suffixes as valid. The
word "work" in a dictionary word list will recognize
work, works, working, and worked in a document as correctly
spelled.
SPELL-IT comes as a DSDD disk version on one disk
($20), a SSSD version on 3 disks ($25), and a hard disk
version on 10 disks ($35). The hard disk version has 200000
words in its dictionaries, the other two versions have 25000
words. SPELL-IT! requires all 19 of its own dictionary word
lists, plus the USER word list to be in the same drive.
This means that single density users (SSSD or DSSD) must
switch dictionary disks in and out of the specified
dictionary disk drive during the spell checking process.
SPELL-IT! can be configured to expect all its dictionaries
to be in any drive you want, but they must all be in this
drive. It would be nice for single density users if
SPELL-IT! could be configured to expect the first dictionary
word lists in one drive and then automatically go to another
drive for the rest of the dictionary word lists. This would
minimize disk swaps for single density users with multiple
drives.
After spell checking, the user is given the opportunity
to do the following with each of the unrecognized words.
A)dd to the user dictionary
C)orrect the word
L)ook for similar words in the dictionary word lists
N)ext word, performs no action on the unrecognized word
P)revious word. You can scan back and fourth with N/P.
V)iew the word in context.
A)- The documentation says that the user dictionary can
be as large as disk space allows. The DSDD version has 541
free sectors. That would hold a truely massive user
dictionary of several thousand words.
C)- Corrected words are later written back into your
original document file.
L)- One, or several, or no words are displayed which
SPELL-IT! believes are similar to the unrecognized word.
The program logic that does this is not as good as that of
the "Franklin Spelling Ace", which does a fantastic job of
phonetically guessing the word you are trying to spell. The
SPELL-IT! logic is better than that of the WriterEase
dictionary, which just presents you with that part of its
dictionary where the unrecognized word would fit
alphabetically. This fails miserably if the first letter or
two of the unrecognized word are incorrect.
V)- Several lines of the original text file are
displayed, one of which contains the first instance of the
unrecognized word. If you have a Geneve or 80 column card
you can configure SPELL-IT! to display in 80 columns. Most
of the time this 80 column display is not as nice as the 40
column display because the SPELL-IT!'s short prompts seem so
small in the middle of an otherwise empty screen. However,
when V)iewing a word in context, an 80 column display is an
asset. V)iewing an 80 column document in 40 columns splits
words in the middle and looks funny.
After you have dealt with the last unrecognized word,
SPELL-IT! v1.05 writes the corrected text file back into
your disk document file under a different file name. Make
sure there is room on the disk. V1.01 overwrites the
original text file with corrections. If the original word
has its first letter capitalized, SPELL-IT! will capitalize
the first letter of the corrected word. If the original is
all in upper case, SPELL-IT! makes the corrected word all in
upper case. If there are no upper case letters in the
original word, there will be none in the corrected word.
Unlike the way Dragon Slayer writes corrections, lines of
your document are not usually split. Document lines are
split only if the corrected word is so much longer than the
original that it won't fit in the line in place of the
original unrecognized word. Thus, minimal or no reformat is
needed in the corrected document.
Dictionary word lists are simply DV80 files with one
word on each line, arranged alphabetically except for the
USER list. These are easy to load into Funnelweb and add to
or subtract from. You can even substitute lists of foreign
language words if you want.
SPELL-IT! is comparable, maybe even as good as, some
modern spell checkers on IBM clone machines. The
combination of 80 column Funnelweb and SPELL-IT! gives our
machines word processing capabilities similar to expensive
machines. So why buy one of the expensive machines?
.PL 1