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ShareSpell v2.1 Text File Spelling Checker Copyright 1989, 1990, Acropolis Software Robert Bequette Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628-9101 THE LEGAL STUFF ShareSpell is provided on an "as is" basis without warranty of any kind expressed or implied. In no event will Acropolis Software be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of or inability to use the program, even if Acropolis Software has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. ShareSpell is copyrighted by Acropolis Software. You are encouraged to give copies to your friends and upload it to bulletin boards, however sale of the program for profit by anyone except Acropolis Software is strictly prohibited. With the exception of a small fee for duplication. That fee does not register you as a user of ShareSpell. If you like ShareSpell and find it useful you are asked to register as a users with Acropolis Software. (See "REGISTRATION" at the bottom of this document for information on how to register). INDEX Introduction ...................................... 1 File list ...................................... 1 Requirements ...................................... 1 Installation One Drive System ...................................... 2 Two Drive System ...................................... 3 Hard Drive System ...................................... 3 How to use to ShareSpell ...................................... 4 Quick Reference ...................................... 6 Questions or Comments ....................................... 7 Registration ....................................... 8 Page 1 INTRODUCTION ShareSpell version 2.1 is a "stand-alone" spelling checker. With it you can check the spelling of text files that you have written. It is completely interactive. It will display the text of the file as it goes through the file checking for spelling errors. At each word that it thinks is misspelled, you'll be given the option of replacing the word from a list of suggested correct spellings, manually correcting the word, adding the word to the dictionary, marking the word for later correction, or ignoring the word throughout the rest of the document. Currently ShareSpell has a 112,000+ word word dictionary and you have the option of adding words that you use all the time such as your name and words specific to your area of writing. ShareSpell is a shareware product. It is not "freeware" or public domain. If you use ShareSpell you are expected to pay for it just like any other program. In return for the $20 registration fee you will receive the latest version of the program and the newest dictionary on either a 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" disk (whichever you prefer). FILE LIST ShareSpell comes with the following files: SS.EXE The ShareSpell Program. SS.DOC This manual. ACROP.DIC The dictionary containing all the words. SS21.NEW New features / bug fixes for ShareSpell. DICMAN.EXE Dictionary Manager utility. DICMAN.DOC Documentation for Dictionary Manager. DICMAN13.NEW New features / bug fixes for Dictionary Manager. It you give copies of this program away you MUST include all seven files in their original form. Distribution with one or more of the files missing or altered in anyway is strictly prohibited. REQUIREMENTS The minimum system requirements to run ShareSpell are: 256K of RAM 1 Floppy disk drive MSDOS/PCDOS version 2.1 or higher A hard drive or two floppy drives are recommended. A single drive system leaves very little room for storage of the file to be checked and its backup. If using a 256K RAM system MSDOS/PCDOS version 2.1 is recommended It allows more memory so that ShareSpell can check the spelling of larger documents. Page 2 INSTALLATION Single Disk Drive System Installation It is possible to use ShareSpell on a single drive system though it will require a little more work from you and it limits the size of the file that you can check. Additionally you will not be able to use Dictionary Manager to alter your dictionary since a single drive system has too limited an amount of disk space. Format a floppy disk and copy the files SS.EXE and ACROP.DIC to it, that will be your working ShareSpell disk. Have a blank disk ready and start up your computer with a DOS disk in the disk drive. Type the following: FORMAT A: When asked to insert a blank disk in drive A: take out your DOS disk and insert the blank disk that will be you ShareSpell working disk. When the formatting is done place your master ShareSpell disk in drive A: and type the following: COPY SS.EXE B: When asked to insert the disk in drive B: take the master ShareSpell disk out of disk drive A: and insert the ShareSpell working disk. If asked to insert the disk in drive A: take out the ShareSpell working disk and insert the ShareSpell master disk. Continue doing so until your are returned to the A> prompt. Now with your ShareSpell master disk in drive A: type: COPY ACROP.DIC B: Follow the same procedure outlined above inserting your ShareSpell working disk in to the A: when asked to insert the disk in drive B: and inserting your ShareSpell master disk in to drive A: when asked. You now have a ShareSpell working disk. Put your master ShareSpell disk away in a safe place so that if something happens to your working disk you can make a new copy by following the steps outlined above. To check the spelling of a file you must copy the file to the ShareSpell working disk first. Example you want to check the spelling of a file named LETTER.TXT. First place the disk with the LETTER.TXT file on it in disk drive A:, then type: COPY A:LETTER.TXT B: Don't worry that you do not have a B: drive, MSDOS will read the file in to memory and ask you to insert the destination disk in drive B:. Take the disk with your file on it out of drive A: and place the ShareSpell working disk in the A: drive and press the RETURN key. LETTER.TXT will be copied to the ShareSpell disk. Now you can type SS to start ShareSpell and check the spelling of your document. Page 3 There are three things to think about when using ShareSpell on a single disk drive system. The first is that you will have to copy the corrected document back to the disk that you copied it from. Second, the amount of space on the ShareSpell disk is limited, you must delete the files that you have been checking when you are finished with them or you will run out of room on the ShareSpell work disk. Third, since ShareSpell places a backup copy of the checked file on the disk you can only check files that are half the size of the amount of free space on your ShareSpell disk. Two Disk Drive System Installation Setting up ShareSpell on a two disk drive system is easy. Start up you computer with a DOS disk in drive A:. Now place a blank disk in drive B: and type: FORMAT B: When the formatting is finished type the following commands: COPY SS.EXE B: COPY ACROP.DIC B: COPY DICMAN.EXE B: You now have a ShareSpell working disk. Put your master ShareSpell disk away in a safe place so that if something happens to your working disk you can make a new copy by following the steps outlined above. To run ShareSpell place the ShareSpell working disk in drive A: and place the disk with the document you want to check the spelling of in disk drive B: type SS to start ShareSpell. When asked for the name of the file to check type B: and the name of the file you wish to correct. An example would be B:LETTER.TXT. Hard Drive System Installation To install ShareSpell on your hard drive you can do one of two things. Install it into the subdirectory that holds your MSDOS/PCDOS external commands or install it into it's own subdirectory. Installing it in the MSDOS command directory is the easiest and most convenient. Most people with hard drives have a subdirectory called DOS, MSDOS, PCDOS, BIN, UTILITY, or something similar that they use to store the external commands for DOS (i.e. FORMAT, DISKCOPY, CHKDSK and so on). It usually already has the PATH set up to search it. If that is how you have your hard drive set up just copy the following files into your directory and ShareSpell is ready to use. Copy -> SS.EXE ACROP.DIC DICMAN.EXE If you do not have your external commands in the path or you do not wish to add ShareSpell into your DOS directory you can make a subdirectory just for ShareSpell, call it whatever you like it doesn't matter to ShareSpell. Page 4 You can either change to the directory that ShareSpell is in to use it or you can add/change the PATH command in you AUTOEXEC.BAT file. By doing so you can use ShareSpell from any where (i.e. in your word processor's subdirectory, from a floppy...). Using a text editor add the following line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: PATH=C:\SPELL That is assuming you called the subdirectory that you copied ShareSpell into SPELL on you C: drive. It you call the directory something else or place it on a different hard drive change the name of the drive and subdirectory accordingly. If you already had a PATH command in your subdirectory add the ShareSpell directory by separating it from the other directories with a semicolon: PATH=C:\MSDOS;C:\TURBO;C:\SPELL Once you have rebooted the system so that the ShareSpell subdirectory is added to the path you can use both ShareSpell and the Dictionary Manager from any subdirectory. HOW TO USE SHARESPELL To use ShareSpell all you need is the file that you created with your word processor or text editor that you want to check the spelling of and of course the ShareSpell program and dictionary. Type SS than press the <RETURN> key. ShareSpell will start up and display it's opening screen. You can use the arrow keys to move around the screen and select the file of which you want to check the spelling. To select the file move to it and press the <RETURN> key. Some of the file names really aren't files, but directories. The files that have <DIR> after their name instead of the file size are subdirectories in the current directory you are in. There also can be one other special file name on the list ".." with the word "PARENT" after it. If you select that file you will be taken to the directory that contains the subdirectory you are in. The only directory that will not have a parent is the root directory of the disk (either hard disk or floppy). If you decide not to check a document just press the <ESC> key and you will be exited from ShareSpell. ShareSpell now scans your document file looking for all of the unique words and then checks the list of words to see if there are any misspelled words. If there are any misspellings ShareSpell will start displaying your file stopping to show you the incorrect words. When ShareSpell finds a word that it does not like it will stop and search the dictionary to find a list of words that it thinks you might have wanted to use instead of the current word. On the lower right hand side of the screen it will display the list of suggested correctly spelled words. To the left of that you will see the list of available commands and just above that you will see the word that it does not like. After the list is displayed you can use the following keys to make changes to the word. Before the list of suggestions is display you can also use any of these commands and ShareSpell will quit the search for suggestions and display the list of alternate words that is has found so far. Page 5 At this point you can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the list of suggested spellings. Use them to select the one that you wish to replace it with. Pressing the <RETURN> key will replace the currently misspelled word with the highlighted word. The empty word at the top is a special location; If the highlight bar is on it when you press the <RETURN> key, the current word will be skipped and not replaced. If you wish to ignore all following occurrences of that word in the document press the <ESC> key. One of your other options is to manually correct the word. When you press either the left arrow, right arrow, or backspace you will see the cursor move over to the suspected word window. Now you can use the arrow keys to move around in the word and the <DEL> and <BACKSPACE> key to correct the spelling manually. Once you press <RETURN> the corrected word will replace the misspelling in the text. Before doing the replacement however ShareSpell will check to see if the word that results from your changes is in the dictionary. If it is not it will ask you first if you really want to make the replacement. If you answer <N>o you will be back to editing the word, a response of <Y>es will cause the word to replace the one in the document file. If you decide that you do not want to manually correct the word use the up or down arrow to move back to the suggestion list. Alternately you can press any of the other command keys to perform that command instead of the manual correction. Pressing the <F8> key will cause ShareSpell to add that word to its dictionary. From that point on that word will not be flagged as misspelled. If at a later date you decide that you did not want the added word in the dictionary you can use the supplied Dictionary Manager utility to remove it from the dictionary. Pressing the <F7> key will cause ShareSpell to mark the word in the file for you by placing a '@' character before it. In addition it ignores any further occurrences of that word in the document. The main use for this is for cases where you think the word may be spelled correctly, but do not have a dictionary at hand to check it with. Later you can use your word processor to find all the marked words by having it search for the '@' character. To quit ShareSpell just press the <F10> key. If you have made any changes to the document it will ask if you want to save those changes before quitting ShareSpell. If you answer <Y>es the updated file will be written to disk in place of the old version. If you answer <N>o the file will remain as it was before you started ShareSpell. Page 6 QUICK REFERENCE Starting ShareSpell: At the DOS Prompt type one or the following: SS or SS filename Starting ShareSpell without a file name will make it prompt you for the name of the file to spell check. Otherwise it will spell check the file you specify. If the file does not exist you will be told so and asked for a new file name. Pressing the <ESC> key will exit you immediately from ShareSpell. ShareSpell will scan through the file until it finds a word that it thinks is misspelled. It will than give you a list of possible correct spellings. At that point you can press one of the following keys: <RETURN> To accept the word as is and continue. <ESC> To ignore the word in the document. This is useful for words such as proper names that you know are spelled correctly, but do not want to add to the dictionary. <F7> Mark and ignore the word. Place a "@" in front of the word so that you can find it later with your word processor. <F8> To add the current word to the dictionary. Good words to add are things such as your name or other proper nouns that you use often. <UP ARROW> <DOWN ARROW> To select one of the alternative spellings. When the word you want to replace the misspelled word with is highlighted press the <RETURN> key and it will be replaced. <LEFT ARROW> <RIGHT ARROW> To manually correct the current word. After you press one of the arrow keys you can use the <DEL>, <BACKSPACE>, and arrow keys to edit the misspelling. When you have it corrected press the <RETURN> key to replace it in the document. Otherwise pressing the up or down arrow will bring you back to the list of suggestions. <F10> Quit ShareSpell. If you have made any changes ShareSpell will ask if you want to save the changes made so far. Use the selected keys until you have corrected all of the document and ShareSpell ends or until you end ShareSpell with the <F10> key. Page 7 QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS If you have any questions or comments I can be reached through the U.S. Mail at: Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628-9101 Or electronically: On CompuServe by sending EasyPlex mail to 75146.3471 On Prodigy by sending mail to RBJN67A Page 8 REGISTRATION As the name implies it is a shareware product. This is not a demo or crippled version of ShareSpell, but a full working version as all the earlier releases have been. If you use ShareSpell, I ask you to send $20 to Acropolis Software to register your copy in return you will receive a disk containing the latest version of both the program and the dictionary. When you register your copy of ShareSpell, please use the order form below. If you do not use the form, please specify that you are registering ShareSpell and indicate your preferred disk format (5 1/4" or 3 1/2"). Purchases of 10 or more copies will receive a discount making each copy of ShareSpell only $10.00 a piece. The spell checking technology is also available for purchase. Contact me for more information. _______________________________________________________________________ Registration / Order Form Name : __________________________ Company : __________________________ Address : __________________________ __________________________ City/State : __________________________ Zip Code : __________________________ (Optional) Phone : __________________________ Basic registration (less than 10 copies) : $20 x ___ = $ ______ Site license registration (10 or more copies) : $10 x ___ = $ ______ Disk Format: 5 1/4" ___ 3 1/2" ___ The product being registered is ShareSpell v2.1. You will receive the latest version of ShareSpell, its dictionary and related utilities. Send check or money order to: Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628-9101