21 Spelling checker

The Thot editor allows the user to check the spelling of a document being processed. Checking is based on dictionaries [Richy92a]. The checker compares the words of the text with those in the available dictionaries. It suggests several replacements for each word which has not been found in the dictionaries. The user can then choose the correct word from the list of suggested words (or can type another word). The replacement operation is performed by the checker.

The spelling checker can correct multiple errors in a single word. The error probabilities are used to order the proposed corrections (see section 23.5). Thus, the proposals that correct a single error are placed before those that correct multiple errors; errors in accents (a e instead of à ê for instance) before deletions or permutations of letters.

The checker can work on multilingual documents: it consults different dictionaries according to the value of the Language attribute (see section 6.1) applied to the text being checked. Dictionaries are currently available for French, English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian; dictionaries for other languages can be added (see section 23.5.1). The parts (or documents) written in languages for which there is no dictionary are not checked.

In addition to the language dictionary, the checker consults the spelling dictionary specific to the document. This dictionary has the name of the document followed by the .DIC suffix. However, the DICODOC configuration parameter (see section 23.5.1) allows you to choose a different dictionary name. By defining this variable, you can use the same spelling dictionary to check all documents. This dictionary is created and automatically updated by the spelling checker when the commands ``Skip (+dic)'' and ``Replace (+dic)'' are issued (see below).

The ``Tools'' menu, at the top of the document windows, contains the command ``Spelling checking''. This command displays a form which enables you to choose the correction parameters and to interact with the checker:

To start the correction, click on the ``Skip and next'' button at the bottom of the form. If an error has been found, the incorrect word is selected and highlighted in the document. If no error has been detected, the ``Not found'' message is displayed in the bottom right corner of the form.

The user can then use one of the buttons placed at the bottom of the form to perform one of the following operations:


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