MySpell is a simple spell checker that uses affix
compression and is modelled after the spell checker
ispell.
MySpell was written to explore how affix compression
can be implemented.
The Main features of MySpell are:
1. written in C++ to make it easier to interface with
Pspell, OpenOffice, AbiWord, etc
2. it is stateless, uses no static variables and
should be completely reentrant with almost no
ifdefs
3. it tries to be as compatible with ispell to
the extent it can. It can read slightly modified
versions of munched ispell dictionaries (and it
comes with a munched english wordlist borrowed from
Kevin Atkinson's excellent Aspell.
4. it uses a heavily modified aff file format that
can be derived from ispell aff files but uses
the iso-8859-X character sets only
5. it is simple with *lots* of comments that
describes how the affixes are stored
and tested for (based on the approach used by
ispell).
6. like ispell it has a BSD license (and no
advertising clause)
But ... it has *no* support for adding words
to a personal dictionary, *no* support for converting
between various text encodings, and *no* command line
interface (it is purely meant to be a library).
It can not (in any way) replace all of the functionality
of ispell or aspell/pspell. It is meant as a learning
tool for understanding affix compression and for
being used by front ends like OpenOffice, Abiword, etc.
MySpell has been tested under Linux and Solaris
and has the world's simplest Makefile and no
configure support.
It does come with a simple example program that
spell checks some words and returns suggestions.
To build a static library and an example
program under Linux simply type:
tar -zxvf myspell.tar.gz
cd myspell
make
To run the example program:
./example ./en_US.aff ./en_US.dic checkme.lst
Please play around with it and let me know
what you think.
Developer Credits:
Special credit and thanks go to ispell's creator Geoff Kuenning.
Ispell affix compression code was used as the basis for the
affix code used in MySpell. Specifically Geoff's use of a
conds[] array that makes it easy to check if the conditions
required for a particular affix are present was very
ingenious! Kudos to Geoff. Very nicely done.
BTW: ispell is available under a BSD style license
from Geoff Kuennings ispell website:
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/ficus-members/geoff/ispell.html
The Original MySpell code was written by Kevin Hendricks
and released under a BSD license. An almost complete rewrite
of MySpell for use by the Mozilla project has been developed by
David Einstein (Deinst@world.std.com). David and I are now
working on parallel development tracks to help our respective
projects (Mozilla and OpenOffice.org and we will maintain full
affix file and dictionary file compatibility and work on merging our
versions of MySpell back into a single tree. David has been
a significant help in improving MySpell.
Special thanks also go to La'szlo' Ne'meth <nemethl@gyorsposta.hu>
who is the author of the Hungarian dictionary and who
developed and contributed the code to support compound words in
MySpell and fixed numerous problems with the encoding case conversion
tables.
Thanks,
Kevin Hendricks
kevin.hendricks@sympatico.ca
7222c83634