Re: Corpora: SPELLCHECKER QUERY

Chris Tribble (ctribble@ikp.atm.com.pl)
Tue, 30 Sep 1997 14:20:57 +0200

Jean Hudson wrote:
>
> Does anyone know of any SPELLCHECKING SOFTWARE that allows you to make your
> own dictionary from scratch? (As far as I know, wordprocessing packages only
> permit the addition of user dictionaries to their existing dictionary.)
>
> ----------------------
> Jean Hudson
> Research Editor
> Cambridge University Press & University of Nottingham
> Spoken English Corpus Project
>
> email: jhudson@cup.cam.ac.uk
> phone: +44-1223-325123
Dear Jean - the answer I've found to this problem is to use good old
WordPerfect 5.1 DOS. This allows you to create as many unique
dictionaries as you want and then specify which one you want to use from
within the wordprocessor.

If I remember correctly you use the program SPELL.EXE to convert any
plain text list into a dictionary which can then be added to as you work
through a document. I suppose that the main restriction of this is that
you will be restricted to the lower end of the ascii character set - but
it's great if you want to build a dictionary of tags or use it for
working with simplified or other specially prepared texts.

If you store your new dictionary in a new subdirectory - eg
c:\wp51\newspell you can also specify a new default supplementary
dictionary which will be used for additions to your new dictionary -
that way your normal default supplementary dictionary doesn't get
screwed up.

Hope this helps

Chris Tribble

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