Re: Anybody got a spell-checking interface thang

[Doug_Merrill@rand.org (Douglas C. Merrill)]

In article <1414650166-205490388@flavors.com>, e@flavors.com (Doug Currie,
Flavors Technology, Inc.) wrote:

> At  4:09 PM 4/7/95 +0000, Richard Lynch wrote:
> >I'm looking for a spell-checker that I can cheaply and easily hook into an
> >MCL app.  Any suggestions?
> 
> In the back pages of MacTech (nee MacTutor) I've seen an offer for Mac
> developers to a free developers' kit for Spellswell. As I understand it,
> the spell-checker is available from your app via AppleEvents. Your
> users/customers would have to buy Spellswell (< $75) to have spell
> checking. Some developers have bought into this approach so users needn't
> have several dictionaries installed on their systems. The commercial
> version of Eudora, for example, uses this approach.
> 
> e

Hi Rich, 

If you're willing to have your users buy SpellSwell, your process can
communicate using the WordServices suite of AppleEvents (pretty nifty, but
not very commonly used).  Not too hard, and quite nicely stable.  

Also, Excalibur (by Rick Zaccone, zaccone@sol.cs.bucknell.edu) is a
freeware (or shareware, can't remember) spell checker that also listens to
AppleEvents (the linkage is nicely demonstrated in Alpha, a shareware
editor written by Peter Keleher pete@cs.rice.edu).  This would save your
users the cost of SpellSwell licenses, and Rick is pretty generous with
support, bug fixes, etc.

Depending on how big the vocabulary you have to check is Rich, you might
just want to build your own -- if you don't need to know many words, it
may be less time to think about fast string compares for a few minutes and
create an optimized dictionary for your particular use.  Take that FWIW.

Peace,

Douglas Merrill

-- 
Douglas C. Merrill
RAND
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