Re: Speller...

["M.W. Poirier" <poirmw>]

   I've thanked Roy Harris off list for his message below.  He
   raises a few very interesting issues that maybe can be ex-
   plored further.  He mentions that the poor performance of the
   spell checker was discussed earlier on the list, and that
   perhaps the discussion was archived somewhere.  I've looked
   for an archive but am unable to find one.  Does someone know
   if there is an archive and where it is located?  Better still,
   does anyone remember what the major conclusions of the discus-
   sion where?  (Parenthetically, why is it that the Microlytics
   spell checker works so poorly, while the Microlytics thesaurus
   functions very well?)

   Alternatively, does anyone know if a third party spell
   checker can be made to work with NB 4.5?  In my search for
   the above mentioned archive, I came across an XYWrite site
   (with some NB material) where Roget's 1911 Thesaurus has
   been configured to work with XYWrite and an earlier version
   of NB.  If a third party thesaurus can be made to function,
   then perhaps a third party spell checker or dictionary can
   also.

   Thanks in advance for whatever you can contribute to this.

   M.W. Poirier
   poirmw



 ===========================================================================
On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Roy Harris wrote:

> "M.W. Poirier" wrote:
> >
> >    I have a bit of a problem with the spell checker.  I've noticed that
> >    on many occasions the spell checker does not suggest alternative or
> >    correct spellings for words that have as little as one letter out of
> >    place.  At first, I thought that it was because the word was not in
> >    the speller, or the speller contained only the root word.  However,
> >    I then discovered that that was not the case.  Indeed, the whole word
> >    was in the speller.  So, now for my question; why isn't the speller
> >    recognizing the mispelled word, ...especially, when there is only one
> >    letter out of place, or alternatively, why isn't it suggesting a list
> >    of alternatives?
> >
> >    Do I need to re-configure the programme for this to take place?  I
> >    seem to recall reading that the dictionary can be reconfigured, but I
> >    can't find the item I read, nor whether this was one of the things
> >    than can be changed.
> >
> >    Please reply to my e-mail address, ...especially, if you suspect that
> >    the answer is obvious to everyone.
> >
> >    M.W. Poirier
> >    poirmw
>
> If you are only having a bit of a problem with NB's speller, count
> yourself lucky! You don't mention whether you are talking about the
> English or the French speller, or which version of NB you are using. The
> ones for NB 3 and 4.1 and 4.2 are the same; I don't know about 4.5. In
> any case, about the best that one can say of the spellers that NB
> licensed from Microlytics, Inc. is that they are not very good,
> especially for offering alternates for misspelled words. What's worse is
> the fact that they flag as misspelled so many correctly spelled forms.
>
> There was a great deal of discussion from me and others about the
> problems and some solutions some years ago. You might want to check to
> see if those messages are archived.
>
> Let's hope that NB for Windows will not use anything by Microlytics, if
> the company is still around!
>
> Roy Harris
> mrh3b
>