Re: spell checker

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Morris Krok  Wed, 04 Oct
2000 08:03:02 -0700

-> Devising a little spell check program to loop through a portion
-> of text is probably more an exercise in programming than there
-> is an actual need.

Fair enough. My home directory is full of non-starters, duds and
"works in progress". No matter. The best way to gain proficiency
in programming is to keep writing programs. (In that spirit, I
could send you some pointers on your code; write me off-list if
you're interested.)

-> The idea however emanated from seeing how Word 2000 underlines
-> every dubious spelling, the moment any change is made to a
-> document, even if it is only changing the font size.

Yeah, I've seen that in WordPerfect and I think it's a very dubious
feature -- although somewhat more benign that XyWrite's Auto-
Correct, which beeps intrusively whenever it encounters a word it's
too dumb to understand. This sort of crutch is totally impractical
for expository writing, with all its proper names, jargon, acronyms,
coinages, buzz words, URLs, and assorted glyphs and morphs. The
signal-to-noise ratio in all those beeps or squiggly underlines is
too low to be useful. IMHO.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/