The main Dictionary of Russian Spell Check was at first created by subtracting all words from eight (8) different Russian books. This task was quite simple. A program was created, which read thru the books, and added each new word into the Dictionary. Finally, there were about 50,000 words in it.
However, at a closer look, the Dictionary contained a large number of incorrectly spelled words. I did not expect, that these books to contained so many errors. In later days, when Grammar Check had taken form, I was again greatly surprised - highly esteemed authors hade made plenty of grammatical errors!
... not enough sleep!
What should I do with the dictionary? Only one thing seemed appropriate. I checked and compared EVERY SINGLE word with one of the most sophisticated printed book dictionaries. This task took up so many hours of work, that the work on Russian Spell Check itself suffered severely. And many nights the lights were still burning in my house, while neighbors slept comfortably.
But, after many red-eyed, early morning appearances at work, I had a working 35,000 word Dictionary. But I was still not satisfied. Too many common words were not in the Dictionary.
So, I decided to add more words from a pocket size dictionary. And after many, many more hours, the size of the Dictionary was approximately 57,000 words.
Later, I had a number of texts to read. I decided to type in all of these texts and have them spell checked. The purpose: (1) more practise typing and (2) more words to add to the Dictionary.
... a long way to go!
About a month back I decided to add every single root word from two of the most significant dictionaries. One of these is a giant with its 760 pages! This task moves on very slow, because there just isn't enough time. Sofar, the Dictionary's complete coverage of root words is limited to the following letters:
Ä, Å, Ç, É, Ñ, Ö, Ü, á, à, â, ä, ã, å, ç and é.
In fact, still a long way to go, in other words. But eventually the Dictionary will become a complete root word reference.
