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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