Many moons ago, Electron User published a basic spell checking program for the View word processor. I have, for the past year or so, been using it and tweaking as its shortcomings became apparent. It is still fundamentally the published program, but I have made both cosmetic and functional differences enough to call it version 2. I now think it is quite a tasty little utility indeed and I prefer it to the copy of Viewspell I recently acquired.

The big pro with this one is that it learns as it goes, which means it quickly moulds itself to your own style. For example, if you write reports about the manufacture of military headware, your vocab is going to be radically different from a frog and princess type story. I have set the code to call a fixed dictionary name (Currently DICTION), but you may want to be able to request the dictionary you require at runtime. The code to revert to a requested disctionary in PROCinitialise is tacked onto the end as three REM statements.

Viewcheck is really meant for those lucky souls whose spelling is already pretty good. If your spillenk is so bad that you can't use a dictionary this program is not for you at all. You also need to be able to remember what you've written - it cannot put the selected words into context. You need to build up a decent dictionary before it comes into its own. I suggest going through a few of your old reports/letters, etc that you know are spelt correctly first and then venture into less certain territory.

I have included a demo file called V.+FAIRY and an incomplete dictionary to use.

Boring But Necessary Stuff

For The Technically Minded:

• An updatable dictionary is read into memory,
• Viewcheck reads a chunk of the source file, splits out each word as a group of one or more defined characters between spaces, slices off common endings (ing's, tion's, etc) and common beginnings (in-, un-, etc) and compares the resulting truncated word with the dictionary previously read into memory. The truncation routine is there to reduce the size of the dictionary read and updated in limited memory space.
• If found, the word is passed.
• If not found, the operator is asked from the screen to: i)gnore, r)eplace or a)dd the word displayed
  
  If the replace option is taken, Viewcheck will repeat the processing for a word, offering it for i)gnore, r)eplace or a)dd if not found.
• When Viewcheck is finished, the source file remains intact and a NEW file called TEXT is written plus the updated dictionary. TEXT differs the source file only by the words r)eplaced. A)dd and i)gnore have no effect on TEXT. Viewcheck can be used with any word processed *SPOOLed file. This version of Viewcheck is meant for use on a disk-based 8-bit Acorn.

For The User Minded:
SAVE the file to be checked, start Viewcheck, answer the question about filename (and if so amended, the dictionary name). Your file is scanned and any words not recognised are displayed on screen. If the word is correctly spelt and you want it added to the dictionary, press a for add. If the word is incorrect (or you just want to change it), press r to replace, and type in your new word. If the program doesn't recognise the word you r)eplace, it will offer it to you for i)gnore, r)eplace or a)dd again. At the end a new file is created called TEXT which you should *RENAME before next using Viewcheck.

Chris Chadwick, EUG #16