Seems like an awful lot of extra overhead, whats the need for a sever instead of having the aspell installed along with the application? I always use this for all of my search applications and works well and is really fast. I guess I don't understand the need for a webservice?
Cool none the less :) Andrew Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
What do y'all think of the idea of a spelling server -- a Web service taking a word as input and returning a list of alternative spellings. [EMAIL PROTECTED] has indexed about 430,000 OAI records. These records have grossly classified into a number of domains such as mathematics, life science, theses & dissertations, and a master domain consisting of all the sub domains. Taking a hint from Bill Mosely (of swish-e fame), I have read the indexes, parsed out the individual words, and fed them to GNU ASPELL, a dictionary program. It is then possible to query ASPELL and have it return alternative spellings. We have incorporated this feature into [EMAIL PROTECTED] I could make this spell checking functionality available as a Web service. The URL could look something like this: http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami The output could look something like this: <?xml version='1.0'?> <spell> <word>origami</word> <spellings> <spelling>origem</spelling> <spelling>irrigam</spelling> <spelling>obrigam</spelling> <spelling>kirigami</spelling> <spelling>ariguama</spelling> </spellings> </spell> It would then be up to the client to do with the content of the spelling elements as they desired. For example, the client could: * spell check a document * implement a Did You Mean? service a la Google * incorporate the results into a Find More Like This One search * enhance the results of an OPAC search * feed selected words back to the spelling server Alternative URL's might include: http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami&domain=master http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami&domain=master&version=1.0 http://spell.ockham.org/? word=origami&domain=master&version=1.0&verbosity=5 Writing the underlying script would be easy. Articulating a XML stream as output would be harder. What do y'all thinque? It would be fun at the very least. -- Eric Lease Morgan University Libraries of Notre Dame (574) 631-8604
