Well, for me, the big benefit of a service is that I don't have to manage it =). a Andrew Forman University of Iowa Libraries ISST Development 319 335 9152 -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Nagy Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 9:18 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] spelling server 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. > > MyLibrary@Ockham 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 > [log in to unmask] > > 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