Spellex Source Code SDK

Technical details

Overview - Features - Technical - Ordering

Application Program Interface (API) Summary

CheckBlock

Spell checks the spelling of words in a block of text -- a phrase, sentence, paragraph, or an entire document. CheckBlock can also optionally detect uncapitalized words, repeated words, words with embedded digits, etc.

CheckWord

Like CheckBlock, but spell checks one word at a time.

Suggest

Locates suggested alternative spellings for a misspelled word. Also produces a score, expressed as a percentage, showing the degree of correlation for each alternative word found. The set of words is returned in order of decreasing score, so the first word is the best choice.

ReplaceBlockWord, DelBlockWord

Replace one word in a text block with another (used to correct misspellings), or delete a word in a text block (used to delete doubled words).

GetOption, SetOption

Get and set option values. See Options for more information.

CreateLex, OpenLex

Creates a new dictionary (lexicon) or opens an existing one. Up to 32 dictionaries can be open at once. Once opened, dictionaries are searched automatically by CheckBlock, CheckWord and Suggest.

AddToLex, DelFromLex

Adds or removes words to/from text (user) dictionaries.

GetLexInfo, GetLex

Obtains information about a dictionary, or obtains a copy of its contents.

Options

The Spellex engine supports the following options for unprecedented flexibility. All of Spellex's options have reasonable defaults so you need to change or set only a small number of properties to suit your application's requirements.

CASE_SENSITIVE_OPT

Controls whether Spellex checks spelling with regard to differences in letter case (e.g., treating america and America as two separate words) or by ignoring differences in letter case. (e.g., treating america and America as the same word). Keeping this option enabled improves performance (because Spellex's dictionaries are optimized for case-sensitive access) and ensures that capitalization errors are detected. You might disable this option when checking text entered in all-caps, for example.

IGNORE_ALL_CAPS_WORD_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words containing just capital letters. If the text contains many abbreviations or acronyms, setting this option prevents them from being reported as spelling errors.

IGNORE_CAPPED_WORD_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words starting with a capital letter. If the text contains many proper names, setting this option prevents them from being reported as spelling errors.

IGNORE_MIXED_CASE_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words which contain a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters. If the text contains variable names, technical jargon, etc. (e.g., YearToDate, FmtString), setting this option prevents them from being reported as spelling errors.

IGNORE_MIXED_DIGITS_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words which contain embedded digits. When checking general text, enabling this option will prevent strings like product codes from being reported as spelling errors. Spellex is flexible enough that it can be used for purposes such as validating product codes and part numbers, in which case this property would be disabled.

IGNORE_DOMAIN_NAMES_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words which appear to be Internet domain names.

IGNORE_NON_ALPHA_WORDS_OPT

Controls whether Spellex automatically skips (ignores) words which contain no alphabetic letters. When checking general text, enabling this option will prevent non-alphabetic strings like phone numbers and ZIP codes from being reported as spelling errors. Spellex is flexible enough that it can be used for purposes such as validating part numbers, in which case this property would be disabled.

REPORT_DOUBLED_WORD_OPT

Spellex can automatically detect the same word appearing twice in a row (e.g., Minutes of the the meeting were filed yesterday.) This option controls whether doubled words are reported to your application.

REPORT_MIXED_CASE_OPT

Spellex can automatically detect words which have an unusual combination of upper- and lower-case letters (e.g., TUesday). This option controls whether mixed-case words are reported to your application.

REPORT_MIXED_DIGITS_OPT

Spellex can automatically detect words which contain embedded digits, which might result from accidentally omitting a space (e.g., Monday14 August). This option controls whether words with embedded digits are reported to your application.

SPLIT_CONTRACTED_WORDS_OPT

When this option is enabled, apostrophes will if necessary be treated as word separators, and each sub-word checked individually. This option is intended for use with the French and Italian dictionaries.

SPLIT_HYPHENATED_WORDS_OPT

When this option is enabled, hyphens ("-") will if necessary be treated as word separators, and each sub-word checked individually.

SPLIT_WORDS_OPT

When this option is enabled, words will if necessary be treated as a series of concatenated sub-words, and each sub-word checked individually. This option is intended for use with the German and Finnish dictionaries.

STRIP_POSSESSIVES_OPT

When this option is enabled, possessives of the form 's and s' will be removed from words before checking their spelling.

SUGGEST_PHONETIC_OPT

When this option is enabled, the Suggest function locates suggested replacements for misspelled words using phonetic (sounds like) matching. Phonetic matching is best used with words which are badly misspelled, as can happen when checking text entered by children or people learning a second language. (Currently, phonetic matching works only with English pronunciation rules.)

SUGGEST_SPLIT_WORDS_OPT

When this option is enabled, the Suggest function will attempt to split the misspelled word into two, and will offer the split words as suggestions if both are valid words. This is useful for correcting words incorrectly joined by a missing space -- e.g., if this option is enabled, the Suggest method would suggest the dog as a replacement for thedog.

SUGGEST_TYPOGRAPHICAL_OPT

When this option is enabled, the Suggest function locates suggested replacements for misspelled words using typographical (looks like) matching. Typographical matching is best used with words which contain one or two spelling errors. See the SUGGEST_PHONETIC_OPT option for more information.

Overview - Features - Technical - Ordering