Newton Developer Technical Information: Newton Programmer's Guide: 2.1 OS Addendum /

Chapter 5 - Spell Checker / Spell Checker Reference

Functions /

SpellCorrect

SpellCorrect(speller, word)

Returns a list of correct alternates for a word.

speller

The frame returned by the *SpellDocBegin function.

word

A string containing a word to correct.

return value

An array of strings containing correct alternates for word. The value nil or an empty array might also be returned if there are no alternates found.

DISCUSSION

This function first processes the word as described in "Processing of Words Passed to the Spell Checker". It then uses the resulting word to generate a list of possible correct alternates for the word. If it finds no alternates, it returns either nil or an empty array.

The returned list contains up to 7 alternates, ordered by their similarity to the original word. Each alternate is punctuated as was the original word, and it is also capitalized like the original (unless fixing the capitalization was part of the problem), so the returned alternates can be directly substituted for the original word.

Note that *SpellCorrect can suggest alternates for correctly spelled words, even though it is normally used only for words that *SpellCheck flagged as incorrect.

The following examples provide an indication of the types of corrections that *SpellCorrect makes:

 SpellCorrect(s, "bxnd") => ["band", "bend"...] // letter substitution

SpellCorrect(s, "baxnd") => ["band"] // letter deletion
SpellCorrect(s, "bnd") => ["bond", "band"...] // letter insertion
SpellCorrect(s, "ernie") => ["Ernie", "Renie"...] // capitalization
SpellCorrect(s, "hisn't") => ["hasn't", "isn't"] // curly apostrophe preserved
SpellCorrect(s, "(and.)") => ["(and.)", "(end.)"...] // punctuation preserved
SpellCorrect(s, "looseends") => ["loose ends"] // words split
SpellCorrect(s, "unfourtaneatly") => ["unfortunately"]  // phonetic substitution
SpellCorrect(s, "Shes") => ["She's", "Shoes"...] // case preserved
 SpellCorrect(s, "SHEP") => ["SHEEP", "SHIP"...] // case preserved