ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER MARCH 1990 USING STAND ALONE ELECTRONIC SPELL CHECKERS WITH ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^WORD PROCESSING ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good ^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group I recently read in an exchange newsletter a commentary to the effect that the lack of a good 80 column word processor WITH built in spell checker is forcing many to leave the TI community. The author of this article suggested that only the appearance of PRESS will be able to halt this stampede to other computer systems. We of course already have in Funnelweb a first class word processor in both 40 and 80 columns, but Funnelweb has no built in spell checker. The problem with any spell checker designed to be used on a TI99/4A system is that you can't put the whole thing into memory. You are limited to the 32K memory expansion for fast access memory, and the spell checker dictionary has to reside on disk or ramdisk. Using the dictionary would require alot of disk or ramdisk access. There would be alot of input/output activity between the CPU and the place where the dictionary is stored. This activity slows things down and somewhat increases the possibility of a computer lock up. The best spell checker for the TI to date is the one that comes with WriterEase. Using the 50000 word WriterEase dictionary off of a disk is quite time consuming. The price of stand alone electronic spell checkers has come down alot in recent months. I have an 80000 word FRANKLIN SPELLING ACE next to my computer. Today this product can be purchased for $40 from many sources. A couple of years ago the Triton catalog listed the SPELLING ACE for $70. FOR LESS THAN $18 you can purchase at WalMart an 84000 word SEIKO WP-1000 spell checker that is functionally almost identical to the SPELLING ACE. The differences between the two are mainly physical. The SPELLING ACE measures 4 x 6.5 x 1 inch and has individual chicklet keys for each letter. There is a 16 character display. You probably wouldn't want to carry the SPELLING ACE around in your pocket, but is light, appears to be physically quite well constructed, and is small enough to fit almost anywhere on the computer desk. The SEIKO is about the size and shape of a thick credit card. The keyboard is a continuous flat membrane, and the display is only 8 characters. If the word is longer, you can window left and right with arrow keys, in a manner similar to that of 40 column Funnelweb. To check the spelling of a word with either of these devices you press the ON button and wait about 1 second for powerup. You then type in your work and press . If the spelling is correct (common plurals and tense varaitions, prefexes and suffexes are recognized as correct) you are informed in about 1 second. If the spelling is incorrect (or correct but not in the dictionary, something that doesn't happen often with common words), the spell checker takes a few seconds (generally about 10 seconds) to generate a list of potential correct spellings. Here is where the spell checkers really shine! These computers contain built in logic for rules of spelling and phonetics. This allows them to reasonably guess what it is you are trying to spell. You are not, as is done with the WriterEase dictionary, just presented with an alphabetical listing of a part of the dictionary where your word would fit if it were in the dictionary. The first word in the word list is the most likely correct spelling of the word, based on the spell checker's knowledge of the rules of spelling and phonetics. Now, whenever, I need to check spelling, I just reach up to the second shelf, grab my spell checker, press ON, and type in the word. There whole process takes only a few seconds. Although these devices can't automatically spell check a whole document, for single word checking I really think these stand alone spell checkers are equal to or better than anything that can be "built in" to a word processor. With a price below $18 they are within the budget of almost anyone. .PL 1