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Registration is not closed yet - so hurry up!

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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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

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!

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.

  

In such situations, we can easily use the DoubleClick event of TextControl to inject our custom selection behaviour. In this sample, I would like to show how a complete sequence of characters delimited by spaces can be selected. The algorithm works as follows:

• Find the next space character before the current input position.
• Find the next space character after the input position.
• Select the range between these positions.

TX Text Control provides some powerful properties to get the required positions in the current Line. When double-clicking somewhere into the string $399.99, this whole price is selected:

The same custom selection works for date values, URLs or e-mail addresses as well:

You can download the fully functional Visual Studio 2008 project below. At minimum a TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms trial version is required.

Download here: tx_sample_selectdecimalnumbers.zip

In March 2012, we are going to exhibit at two fantastic conferences in one week: DevConnections in Las Vegas and the Orlando .NET Code Camp.

From Monday 26th to Thursday 29th, we will be staffing the Text Control booth in the exhibition halls of the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas. Twice per year, DevConnections shows the latest trends to get the most up to date information and training.

Meet top-speakers such as Scott Guthrie, Steve Fox or Carl Franklin and learn from them. This year, the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 launch is co-hosted by DevConnections - so expect a lot of buzz.

On Friday, we are flying to Orlando to support the local Orlando .NET User Group. They are organizing the Orlando .NET Code Camp at the Seminole State College.

We are very proud to be a Diamond sponsor of this great community event. The event will have speakers from the local community and beyond at a very nice venue. Hurry up and register for this free event soon - it is getting sold out fast.

See you in Vegas and/or Orlando!

Fresh from our labs, I would like to present some ideas how spell checking can be integrated into the .NET Framework DataGridView and related editing workflows.

Microsoft^® Excel provides only a spell checking dialog to loop through the misspelled words. This is a very good way to check the whole spreadsheet when the user has finished the data entry. In word processing applications, users are familiarized with a live feedback of what they typed. This spell-as-you-type concept is a strong feature of TX Text Control and TX Spell .NET.

But how to use this concept in a DataGridView?

The context menu approach

This sample illustrates a smart way of implementing live spelling with the powerful .NET spell checking component TX Spell .NET.

The following screenshot shows a DataGridView on a form. If a cell contains misspelled words, a little icon is displayed in the upper left corner of the cell.

When right-clicking a misspelled cell, a context menu is opened. The specialty of this context menu is that it shows all misspelled words of the current cell in a single menu. The context menu is not closed until the last misspelled word has been replaced or Close is clicked explicitly.

This gives you a very elegant way to replace all misspelled words in a cell with a single context menu. After a misspelled word has been replaced, it is displayed in green and strikethrough.

The spell check dialog approach

The second approach in this sample is a spell checking dialog that iterates through all cells in order suggest replacements for the misspelled words. This approach is comparable to the way how Microsoft implements spell checking in Excel.

The sample Visual Studio 2008 project requires at least a trial version of TX Spell .NET.

Download here: txspell_grid.zip

The above described methods are just ideas to integrate powerful spell checking into various processes. Using TX Spell .NET, you can add reliable spell checking to any control, workflow or application.

This medical dictionary includes approximately 50,000 medical terms, medications and drug brand-names. From abdominoscopy to zygapophyseal - words I can't even pronounce. It has been fully tested and approved to be used in TX Spell .NET for Windows Forms and TX Spell .NET for WPF.

This dictionary is bundled in the en_US dictionary package and can be directly downloaded here: tx_spell_dictionary.en_US.zip.

We have sold our products with the software component reseller ComponentSource since their establishment in 1995. One of the first products sold by ComponentSource was TX Text Control.

We are very happy with the relationship and close co-operation that we have developed. ComponentSource now sells more than 10,000 different products from 250+ publishers. 12 leading publishers are listed as Enterprise partners and Text Control is one of them.

A list of your official local resellers can be found here:

TX Text Control Resellers