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- If you are like me and use a text editor for your documents, you may
- have felt the need for a spell checker. I wrote the following program
- to save myself the time of manually checking my files. Instructions
- follow.
-
- Afterwrds is a spell checker for ascii files ONLY. Attempting to
- spell check other files, such as word processing documents will cause
- unknown results.
-
- To run the program enter: afterwrds <filename>
-
- A screen with logo and program interface will appear on the screen. The
- program interface consists of 5 gadgets and an area where the misspelled
- word and the context lines surrounding the misspelled word appear.
-
- The program will then load its dictionary and begin spell checking
- the specified file. If an unknown word is encountered, the word will
- appear at the top of the display and the context lines surrounding
- the word will appear. The cursor will be positioned on the word in
- question.
-
- The program was designed to spell check files with a line length of no more
- than 80 characters. The program will spell check files with lines of length
- greater than 80 characters but the display of the context lines will be
- trashed and the cursor will not appear over the proper word. The context line
- display will also be trashed in certain instances where tabs are used. This
- is not a problem as the misspelled word is listed by itself at the top of
- the display.
-
- After the misspelled word and context lines have been displayed, you will
- be need to choose one of 4 interface gadgets:
-
- ADD - add the word to the dictionary
-
- SKIP - skip over the current instance of the unknown word
-
- IGNORE - skips over the current instance of the unknown word and
- any other instances of the word throughout the remainder
- of the file.
-
- CORRECT - allows the correction of any misspelled word
-
- QUIT - quits the program
-
- If you choose "correct" the program will prompt you for the proper spelling
- of the word. After entering the proper spelling, press the return key. If
- the word is found in the dictionary, spell checking will continue. If the
- word is not found in the dictionary, the word will be treated as if it were
- misspelled and you are required to choose one of the five gadgets again.
-
- When spell checking of the file is completed, you will be asked if you want
- to check another file. If you choose yes, the spell checking process will
- begin on the new file. If you choose no, the dictionary will be saved back
- to disk and the program will quit and write the total number of dictionary
- entries to STDOUT. The corrected version of your input file can be found in
- the current directory with a ".chk" extension.
-
- You can quit the program at any time by choosing the quit gadget. If you
- quit in the middle of spell checking a file, when the dictionary is saved
- back to the disk, any new words you may have added up to that point WILL
- be saved.
-
- If you choose to do so, you can also use the keyboard to operate the program.
- Simply enter the first letter of the gadget choice you wish to make.
-
- The dictionary is stored in a compressed format using diatomic replacement.
- If you enter an incorrect word into the dictionary, you will have to first
- quit the spell checking program. Then run the diatomic program on the
- dictionary file "spell.dict".
-
- Enter diatomic spell.dict -d
-
- This will decompress the spell.dict file and write it to the file
- "spell.dict.dcom". You then need to examine this file with your text editor
- and remove the offending word(s). When you are done, the corrected dictionary
- needs to be recompressed. To do this enter:
-
- diatomic spell.dict.dcom -c
-
- This recompresses the file and writes it to the file "spell.dict.dcom.com".
- Rename the "spell.dict.dcom.com" file "spell.dict" and you are finished.
-
- If you have any suggestions or comments, you should be able to reach me on
- the FAUG BBS.
-
- Ryu Anderson.
-