On Sep 13, 2005, at 9:17 AM, Andrew Nagy 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.
>
> 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?

Actually, I think you have a valid point.

We here at MyLibrary@Ockham Central initially thought about
implementing the spell checking functionality as a Web service. We
then thought it would be too much bandwidth. We thought the same
thing regarding the inclusion of WordNet. (There is a Web Service
implementation.) Consequently we implemented them as library/module
calls.

On the other hand, our library/module calls are not very... modular.
Implemented as Web Service we could select from many spell checking
services and/or use the output in ways not necessarily expected with
the hard coded versions.

Maybe they would be just fun hacks. Maybe they could provide
something more useful. I'm not sure.

--
Eric