The Florida user groups are hosting the eighth code camp at the Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie: South Florida Code Camp 2012. This free one day geek fest is held on Saturday February 18, 2012.
We are very proud to be on site as a sponsor and exhibitor to meet the South Florida .NET community. Talk to us about our latest versions and new products such as TX Spell .NET for Windows Forms or WPF. Or simply stop by our booth and say hello.
Registration is not closed yet - so hurry up!
South Florida Camp Registration
We look forward meeting you in Florida!
Recently, I had an interesting discussion with our TX Spell .NET team lead. I only wanted to know what he is currently working on. A question you should better not ask an enthusiastic developer, if you don't have enough time. But I took the time to learn more about creating suggestions for misspelled words.
The big question is:
How to create appropriate suggestions for a misspelled word in a language you may not be familiar with?
We spend a lot of time researching such questions in order to provide you with the best components on the market. I won't disclose our secrets why TX Spell .NET is so fast and accurate, but I thought to share some basics to give you an idea of the complexity on this subject.
Two main steps are required to generate a list of appropriate suggestions:
Transformation and Permutation
In a first step, all possible transformations and permutations of the misspelled word must be created to a specific depth level. This is the most time consuming process. Characters must be removed, added, replaced or shifted. The performance of this algorithm is the key element in this process.
Evaluation and Rating
After all possible candidates have been created, they must be somehow weighted. This should increase the probability that the first suggestion is the word that the user wanted to type originally.
But how to rank such a candidate?
There are many factors that must be included in such algorithms. The obvious factor are phonetic replacements. Consider the following word:
ENOUF -> ENOUGH
F should be replaced with it's phonetic opponent GH.
But this is just the most simple way to rate a suggestion. More complex considerations are required to build a high-potential replacement word. Another approach is to measure the distances between the keys on the currently used keyboard. Considering a US English keyboard, the probability of pressing the "S" key instead of the "A" is much higher than hitting the "L" which is on the other side of the keyboard. But at the same time, the algorithm must decide whether the pressed "L" was intended and the "A" was just missed. As you can see, this is a very complex order which took us a lot of time and efforts. But we faced the problem to weight the different changes in the suggestion.
If you want to build something exceptional, then do something exceptional.
Following this lead, our TX Spell .NET team analyzed internal chat protocols for misspelled words and typos. Chat histories are very useful, because we don't necessarily correct typos before sending the messages and we type fast when chatting. The analysis shows a varied picture of various factors.
This is just a very simple overview of the approaches to create appropriate suggestions. All of these results are or will be implemented in TX Spell .NET. You can focus on your core business - we do the word processing part.
Recently, we released the Visual Basic 6 version of our spell checking component TX Spell .NET. This ActiveX Package gives you all the power and functionality of TX Spell .NET in a Visual Basic 6 compatible form.
We have added specific methods and properties that are fully compatible to Visual Basic 6 and other Win32 IDEs such as Delphi or Access. AxTXSpell contains 4 classes:
AxTXSpellChecker
The AxTXSpellChecker class implements a component with spell checking features.
IncorrectWord
The class IncorrectWord represents a misspelled word and provides properties such as the start index or length.
OpenOfficeDictionary
The OpenOfficeDictionary class represents a dictionary which gets its content from a Hunspell Open Source dictionary.
UserDictionary
The UserDictionary class represents a dictionary that allows you to use, create and edit your own dictionaries.
In order to load an existing user dictionary, a new UserDictionary object must be created. By specifying the DictionaryPath, an existing dictionary can be loaded. Finally, the new created dictionary must be added to the AxTXSpellChecker instance using AddUserDictionary.
Dim UserDic As AxTXSpell.UserDictionary
Set UserDic = New UserDictionary
UserDic.DictionaryPath = "c:\en_US_Legal.txd"
TXSpell1.AddUserDictionary UserDic
Now, the user dictionary is automatically used to spell check the document. You can easily add new words to the dictionary by using the AddWord method. These changes can be preserved by saving the dictionary with the Save method:
UserDic.AddWord "TXTextControl"
UserDic.Save "c:\en_US_Legal.txd"
The conference season 2012 is approaching fast. Next month, we are exhibiting at the renowned .NET conference BASTA! Spring 2012.
50 speakers, 75 sessions, high-quality workshops and the industry leading vendors in one location.
We are going to show the latest member of our product family: TX Spell .NET - the fastest and most accurate spell checking engine available for .NET Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF or Visual Basic 6. Ask for a demo of TX Text Control 17.0 and perhaps, you can get a sneak preview of new amazing features coming in version 18.0.
Just like at any code camp, conference or group meeting we are sponsoring, we are raffling a Microsoft XBOX 360. So, don't forget to stop by our booth to get your raffle ticket.
See you at BASTA!
We just published a US English legal dictionary with commonly used legal terms. We ran a diff against our US English dictionary in a way that the legal word list contains only terms that are not included in the normal US English dictionary.
From affranchise to whistleblower, this dictionary is packed with legal words to be used in applications for attorneys, legal departments or court transcription services. It is published as an user dictionary (extension *.txd) and can be easily extended.
You can download this dictionary as part of the "English - United States" dictionary package:
tx_spell_dictionary.en_US.zip
To test this dictionary:
Copy the en_US_Legal.txd file into the default Dictionaries folder.
(default: C:\Program Files\Text Control GmbH\TX Spell 2.0 .NET for Windows Forms\Assembly\Dictionaries)
In Visual Studio, select the TXSpellChecker instance on your form to view it's properties in the Properties window. The legal dictionary can be automatically found in the list of available dictionaries. Select the legal dictionary as the default Language and you are done.
