Corpora: spellcheckers

Jean Hudson (jhudson@cup.cam.ac.uk)
Wed, 22 Oct 1997 10:59:45 +0100

Some time ago I posted this query on behalf of a colleague, who has tested
some of the solutions offered and summarizes below.
Jean

>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.)

Thanks to everyone who responded.

The purpose of using your own dictionary and only your own dictionary
is so that you can check a file against a restricted vocabulary list,
a common requirement in ELT books. Obviously, it is not too difficult
a programming task to write a program to check every word in a file
(especially if it is a plain text file), but why reinvent the wheel
if programs already exist? And ideally, the spellchecking program
would work seamlessly within your word processor while working on the
file.

Sabine Bartsch" <bartsch@hrz1.hrz.th-darmstadt.de> wrote:
>Word for Windows also allows you to set up a user defined dictionary
>in addition to the default dictionary. The menu you want is under
>TOOLS, then OPTIONS on the file card SPELLING where you can set a
>user defined dictionary and specify a name for a brand new and empty
>dictionary. The dictionaries accessed by WinWord are also editable
>from the same menu and are then treated as a plain text file. There
>is a 128 kB size limitation for any individal dictionary used in
>WinWord (at least this was the case under WinWord 6, not sure this
>still applies), but then you can always use more than one dicitonary
>in case the first one you create becomes too large.

This would be the ideal solution, as we predominately use
Microsoft Word, but can anyone else confirm this? Our attempts
suggest that you always have to use the master dictionary as well as
the custom dictionary, and that you can't edit Microsoft's master
dictionary.

Word Perfect may be better. Chris Tribble <ctribble@ikp.atm.com.pl>
suggested using SPELL.EXE with Word Perfect 5 for DOS. Jogchum
Reitsma <jreitsma@fa.knaw.nl> confirmed that Word Perfect 6 for
Windows also allowed you to create a dictionary from scratch.

Imre Galambos suggested a different word processor UltraEdit.

George Wade <geogwade@ps.inforyoma.or.jp> suggested Excalibur for the
Apple Mac.

Many people suggested ISPELL for UNIX, but it was not thought to be
available for different platforms and file formats.

Most other responses were to do with specialist spell-checking
applications, and it was not always clear whether these products
would allow you to create dictionaries from scratch.

Sean Sutton of Lingua Systems <http://www1.btwebworld.com/LinguaSy>
suggested a number of specialist applications:
> http://www.quinion.demon.co.uk/mqa/spell.htm
> Spelling checker for Email/Netscape/WordPad
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win95/demo/spell232.zip
> spell checker & corrector; handles citations
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win95/demo/xpr_demo.zip
> US English dictionary for SPELL300
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/simtelnet/win3/txtutl/useng.zip
> Spell checker add-on for most Windows programs
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/simtelnet/win3/txtutl/spel300e.zip
> Grammar Checker and Spell Checker for Windows
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/simtelnet/win3/editor/winpro36.zip
> Spell Check programmers' Source Code
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/programr/codespel.zip
> Winproof Grammar checker and Spell checker
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/util/winpro36.zip
> SPELLING SENTRY v2.1 - Spell checker for Win3.1x
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/util/spell216.zip
> Win spell checker: checks/corrects .wri/.txt/clipboard
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/util/spellsen.zip
> Check Your Spelling in ANY Windows Application
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/util/wnsp3082.zip
> Spelmate DLL allows you to add spelling to your App
> ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/cica/pc/win3/programr/spmate13.zip
>
> http://www.mv.com/ipusers/lexsaurus
> http://wintertree-software.com
> http://cat.rpi.edu/~tibbetts/ispell_toc.html

Nenad Knocar <nk3@doc.ic.ac.uk> suggested Word Translator Software
(www.tranexp.com) for any Windows application.

Yves Schabes of Terragram <schabes@terragram.co> suggested Terragram
spellchecking software!

Brian Ulicny of INSO <www.inso.com> suggested their product
CyberSpell.

Shin'ichi Kurokawa <skgpsg@green.ocn.ne.jp> suggested a spellchecker
from <http://clever.net/quinion/spell> for any word processor (also
mentioned above).

Dominic Dunlop <domo@tcp.ip.lu> suggested looking at
<http://www.greymatter.co.uk/gmWEB/Nodes/NODE066F.HTM> but suspects
some programming will be required anyway.

Andrew Harley
Systems Manager - ELT Reference
Cambridge University Press
(01223) 325880