The enclosed stack and XCMD resources demonstrate how to use the Word Services Apple Event Suite from your HyperCard stacks. To try it out, launch Spellswell 7 or the Spellswell 7 Demo, then open the Word Services stack and press the Spellcheck button.
Word Services allows any application that uses text to link to a speller, grammar checker or other text service as if it is a built-in menu item. Word Services is a public protocol - no license fee or nondisclosure is required to use it.
AppleScript must be installed to allow HyperCard to use Word Services. Normally, Word Services does not use AppleScript at all, but HyperCard requires it.
There is a subtle bug in HyperCard which prevented Word Services from working. We have worked around the bug in Spellswell 7. You will need to obtain version 2.0.2 of Spellswell 7 or the Spellswell 7 Demo in order to use this stack. Earlier Spellswell versions will be able to retrieve text from the stack but will not be able to replace the erroneous words with corrections.
The XCMD itself is not yet finished. The XCMD now takes optional parameters for which card and field to check. Another XCMD needs to be written to allow the user to choose a service, rather than hardwiring the Spellswell creator code into the button script. I also need to launch the speller rather than requiring it to run in the background.
To use the XCMD in your own stack, use ResEdit to copy the XCMD resource from the Word Services Stack into your stack. Then use the Button tool to open up the script of the Spellcheck button. Copy the script into a button in your own stack.
Complete documentation and free source code to Write are available on the Word Services home page at:
