Spellex Windows SDK

Technical details

• Packaging: Win32/Win16 STDCALL DLLs

• Performance: Checks spelling of over 30,000 words per second on 300Mhz PII

• DLL Size: Win32: 160K; Win16: 120K

• Dictionary file size: Average of .5Mb per language

• Run-time memory requirements: Typically .5Mb - 1.0 Mb

• Operating systems supported: Win3x, Win9x, Win NT, Win2000

The Spellex Spelling-Checker Engine's API provides direct, straightforward calling from C, C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, MFC, and other DLL-enabled applications. Only simple data types (integers and character strings) are used in the API. All the constants, data types, and function prototypes you’ll need are contained within a single include file. The Spellex DLL is self-contained and is not dependent on any other DLLs.

Overview - Features - Technical - Languages - Ordering

Application Program Interface (API) Summary

CheckCtrlBackground

Monitors a rich-edit control (CRichEditCtrl, TRichEdit, RichTextBox) for spelling errors as the user types. Misspelled words are changed to red, and corrected words are changed back to black. Right-clicking the mouse over a misspelled word pops up a menu containing suggested replacements. Selecting one of the suggestions in the menu replaces the misspelled word.

CheckCtrlDlg

Checks the spelling of text contained in a text box or rich-text box, identified by a window handle. If any misspelled words are detected, CheckCtrlDlg highlights the misspelled word in the text box and pops up a built-in dialog box to interact with the user to dispose of the problem. This powerful function makes it possible to add a spell checker to your application with just one statement!

CheckBlockDlg

Checks the spelling of text contained in a string or character array (a text block). If any misspelled words are detected, CheckBlockDlg pops up a built-in dialog box to interact with the user to dispose of the problem. CheckBlockDlg can optionally display the checked string so the user can see the misspelled word in context. CheckBlockDlg makes it possible to add a spell checker to any application with just one statement!

CheckString

Checks the spelling of words in a text string: a phrase, sentence, paragraph, or an entire document. CheckString is non-interactive, meaning it reports misspelled words back to your application without interacting with the user. CheckString returns to your application when it finds the next misspelled word in the text or when it reaches the end of the text. CheckString also reports incorrectly capitalized words and words requiring automatic or conditional correction.

CheckWord

Like CheckString, but spell checks one word at a time. Your application would use CheckString to check the spelling of a single word without interacting with the user.

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. Suggestions can be located using typographical (looks like) or phonetic (sounds like) matching, or both.

ReplaceStringWord,
DelStringWord

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

AddToLex, DelFromLex

Adds or removes words to or from user dictionaries.

GetLexInfo, GetLex

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

GetStatistics

Returns statistics about the last text block or control spell checked, including the number of words checked and the number of word replacements made.

EditLexDlg

Displays a dialog box which allows the user to manage a set of user dictionaries and to edit the contents of any user dictionary. Users can open, close, and create new user dictionary files.

OptionsDlg

Displays a dialog box which allows the user to set spelling-checker options.

Properties

The following properties can be set through the API, system registry, or INI file:

Set to 1 if automatic replacements defined in a dictionary (e.g., CORRECT.TLX) should be made automatically; set to 0 if the changes should be treated as suggested replacements.

Set to 1 if Spellex should treat words identified with different letter-case patterns as different words; set to 0 if words differing only in their case patterns should be considered identical.

Set to the name of a file used to record diagnostic events; delete or set to an empty value to disable diagnostic logging.

Set to 1 to display a bold font in the dialogs; set to 0 if the font should be normal weight.

Name of the help file invoked when the user presses the Help button on a dialog.

Set to 1 if HTML markups appearing in the text should be ignored (skipped).

Set to 1 if words consisting entirely of capital letters should be ignored (skipped); set to 0 if they should be spell checked.

Set to 1 if words containing an unusual mixture of upper- and lower-case letters should be ignored; set to 0 if they should be spell checked.

Set to 1 if words beginning with a capital letter should be ignored (skipped); set to 0 if they should be spell checked.

Set to 1 if words that appear to be Internet domain names (e.g., spellex.com) should be ignored; set to 0 if they should be spell checked.

Set to 1 if words containing a mixture of letters and digits should be ignored; set to 0 if they should be spell checked.

Comma-separated list of lexicon (dictionary) files forming the main lexicon. Each file name can contain a path relative to the MainLexPath directory or an absolute path name. Your application can change the dictionaries used by the Spellex engine (to change the language, for example) by setting this property.

Path to the directory containing the main lexicon (dictionary) files.

Set to the depth which should be used initially to locate suggestions for misspelled words.

Set to 1 if suggestions should include words which sound like the misspelled word; set to 0 if phonetic suggestions should not be given.

Name of the system registry tree where property values will be accessed and stored.

Set to 1 if the same word appearing twice in a row should be reported to the user; set to 0 if the word should be ignored.

Set to 1 if Spellex should treat apostrophes as word separators and spell check each individual word separately (only if the original contracted word was not found); set to 0 if contracted words should be spell checked in their entirety only. This option is intended for use with languages such as French and Italian.

Set to 1 if Spellex should treat hyphens as word separators, and spell check each individual word (only if the original hyphenated word was not found); set to 0 if hyphenated words should be spell checked in the entirely only.

Set to 1 if Spellex should attempt to break misspelled words into a series of shorter, correctly spelled words (only if the original word was not found); set to 0 if words should be spell checked in their entirely only. This option is intended for use with languages such as Finnish and German.

Name of the table used to obtain variable text strings displayed in the built-in dialogs.

Set to 1 if suggestions can include two shorter words formed by splitting the misspelled word (e.g., suggest "the dog" for "thedog"); set to 0 if suggestions of this form should not be offered.

Set to 1 if suggestions for misspelled words should include words which are typographically similar to the misspelled word; set to 0 if typographical suggestions should not be given.

Comma-separated list of user lexicon (dictionary) files. Each file can contain a path relative to the UserLexPath directory or an absolute path.

Path to the directory containing user lexicon (dictionary) files.

Overview - Features - Technical - Languages - Ordering