22 Nov
2013
22 Nov
'13
3:53 p.m.
I think we should all get together and send Tony Duell a new spell
checker for Christmas. I think his old one finally bit the dust, LOL!
All in good humor Tony. You're a great contributor to the list!
Dave L.
--
Dave Land
Land Computer Service xmechanic at landcomp.net
22 Nov
22 Nov
9:27 p.m.
All in good humor Tony. You're a great
contributor to the list!
He is, he really is. Most spelling errors just grate on me, but are
like tripping over a kerb: annoying, a slight delay, but not a real
obstacle. tony's are the only ones I sometimes have to actually stop
and think about what the intent could be to figure out - and even
despite that I find I consider him possibly the most valuable single
contributor we have.
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23 Nov
23 Nov
9:35 a.m.
On Sat, 23 Nov 2013, Mouse wrote:
Well from where I read, it's like having a 6" curb randomly spaced every
12" to 30" with water filled potholes covered with holographic shields, so
you don't see them until your foot is soaked...
:)
g.
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All in good
humor Tony. You're a great contributor to the list!
He is, he really is. Most spelling errors just grate on me, but are
like tripping over a kerb: annoying, a slight delay, but not a real
obstacle. tony's are the only ones I sometimes have to actually stop
9:58 a.m.
On 11/23/13 10:35 AM, geneb wrote:
On Sat, 23 Nov 2013, Mouse wrote:
Well from where I read, it's like having a 6" curb randomly spaced every
12" to 30" with water filled potholes covered with holographic shields,
so you don't see them until your foot is soaked...
:)
g.
LMAO! ...and I was trying to be nice! :D
Dave L.
--
Dave Land
Land Computer Service xmechanic at landcomp.net
All in
good humor Tony. You're a great contributor to the list!
He is, he really is. Most spelling errors just grate on me, but are
like tripping over a kerb: annoying, a slight delay, but not a real
obstacle. tony's are the only ones I sometimes have to actually stop 
12:46 p.m.
I think we should all get together and send Tony Duell a new spell
checker for Christmas. I think his old one finally bit the dust, LOL!
I'll accept it with many thanks, provided you can find one that :
a) Has the source code avaialble (this does not necessarily imply
open-source, just that I can get the source code)
b) That will run on my machine
c) That does not have a serious impact on my system's performance
(remember this is probably the slowest linux box around, running at 1.15
Bogomips IIRC)
d) Does not make sill corrections without informing me. There is a story,
probably an urban legend, that a local government wote to all the
residients in its area intending to start the letter 'Dear sir or madam'.
It got spell-corrected to 'Dear sir or madman'. I'd rather have typos
than things like that.
-tony
2:27 p.m.
On 11/23/2013 12:46 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Oxford Unabridged Dictionary does all that - plus works as a
paperweight. and it wouldn't need to be shipped far......
zzzzzzzzz
s2
I think we
should all get together and send Tony Duell a new spell
checker for Christmas. I think his old one finally bit the dust, LOL!
I'll accept it with many thanks, provided you can find one that :
a) Has the source code avaialble (this does not necessarily imply
open-source, just that I can get the source code)
b) That will run on my machine
c) That does not have a serious impact on my system's performance
(remember this is probably the slowest linux box around, running at 1.15
Bogomips IIRC)
d) Does not make sill corrections without informing me. There is a story,
probably an urban legend, that a local government wote to all the
residients in its area intending to start the letter 'Dear sir or madam'.
It got spell-corrected to 'Dear sir or madman'. I'd rather have typos
than things like that.
-tony
3:55 p.m.
>> I think we should all get together and send
Tony Duell a new spell
>> checker for Christmas. I think his old one finally bit the dust, LOL!
On 11/23/2013 12:46 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
> I'll accept it with many thanks, provided you can find one that :
> a) Has the source code avaialble (this does not necessarily imply
> open-source, just that I can get the source code)
> b) That will run on my machine
> c) That does not have a serious impact on my system's performance
> (remember this is probably the slowest linux box around, running at 1.15
> Bogomips IIRC)
> d) Does not make sill corrections without informing me. There is a story,
> probably an urban legend, that a local government wote to all the
> residients in its area intending to start the letter 'Dear sir or madam'.
> It got spell-corrected to 'Dear sir or madman'. I'd rather have typos
> than things like that.
On Sat, 23 Nov 2013, steve shumaker wrote:
Oxford Unabridged Dictionary does all that - plus
works as a
paperweight. and it wouldn't need to be shipped far......
zzzzzzzzz
The full set would be adequate to weigh down a large vehicle, and
would be expensive to ship even locally.
I have a copy of the "Compact Edition" (same thing, but tiny print and
comes with a magnifying glass).
But, it is NOT FPUIB; I am NOT ready to part with it.
But, if it would help, I can specify that it be assigned to Tony in my
will.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
http://www.xenosoft.com/FPUIB
24 Nov
24 Nov
12:16 p.m.
Oxford
Unabridged Dictionary does all that - plus works as a
paperweight. and it wouldn't need to be shipped far......
zzzzzzzzz
The full set would be adequate to weigh down a large vehicle, and
would be expensive to ship even locally.
I have a copy of the "Compact Edition" (same thing, but tiny print and
comes with a magnifying glass).
The one that Jerry Pournelle called the 'trnasistorised version'?
But, it is NOT FPUIB; I am NOT ready to part with it.
But, if it would help, I can specify that it be assigned to Tony in my
will.
I hope it won;t help, in that I don;t want you to pass away any time soon!
-tony
11:39 a.m.
Oxford Unabridged Dictionary does all that - plus
works as a
paperweight. and it wouldn't need to be shipped far......
Actaully it doesn't (if I looked up every word in a dictionary, the
overall system performance would drop noticeably). In any case, it's
solving the wrong problem.
If you have a reliable disk system (including the controller, etc)
connected to your terminal by a noisy communications link, then improving
the error correction system of the disk controller will not reduce the
number of errors on your terminal screen.
I _know_ the common term for the energy to move a unit charge between 2
points in a circuit is 'voltage'. But half the time it comes out a
votlage. Lookign the word up in dictionary wil lnot help with that.
-tony
23 Nov
23 Nov
2:54 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 23 November 2013 20:46
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Christmas is coming and...
Just out of interest, what machine do you use?
I think we should all get together and send Tony Duell a new spell
checker for Christmas. I think his old one finally bit the dust, LOL!
I'll accept it with many thanks, provided you can find one that :
a) Has the source code avaialble (this does not necessarily imply open-
source, just that I can get the source code)
b) That will run on my machine
c) That does not have a serious impact on my system's performance
(remember this is probably the slowest linux box around, running at 1.15
Bogomips IIRC)
d) Does not make sill corrections without informing me. There is a story,
probably an urban legend, that a local government wote to all the
residients
in its area intending to start the letter 'Dear
sir or madam'.
It got spell-corrected to 'Dear sir or madman'. I'd rather have typos than
things like that.
This reminds me of a funny thing. My wife is Italian and we sometimes email
each other at work; when we do, we type in Italian. The trouble is Outlook
doesn't know that we are typing in Italian and tries to correct the text as
if it were English, with sometimes quite strange and hilarious results. The
best one is when she writes "bacioni", which means "big kisses" at the
end,
Outlook changes it to "Bacon", so now we sign off all our emails to each
other with various breakfast foods.
Of course it is perfectly possible to turn this off altogether, but it is
useful to have the autocorrect feature most of the time, just not when
trying to type in a different language.
Regards
Rob
24 Nov
24 Nov
10:39 a.m.
On 23 November 2013 22:54, Robert Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:
Just out of interest, what machine do you use?
If I remember correctly, it's something like an original IBM PC-AT,
with a 386 CPU upgrade board in it, possibly with a 486 or 486sl
upgrade on that. 16MB of RAM, possibly.
But he has all the schematics, so that he can repair it if it fails, you see.
I hope I have this correct or at least not too unrepresentative.
--
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12:37 p.m.
On 23 November 2013 22:54, Robert Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:
Yes, a 486s, It;s a little kludgevboard in the socket that held the
80286. It is the original IBM motheboard.
Just out of interest, what machine do you use?
If I remember correctly, it's something like an original IBM PC-AT,
with a 386 CPU upgrade board in it, possibly with a 486 or 486sl upgrade on that. 16MB of RAM, possibly.
Make that 7.5M or thereabouts. I seem to remember i have the normal 640K
and 7M above the 1M boundary.
But he has all the schematics, so that he can repair it if it fails, you see.
And the ROM source listings....
-tony
11:43 a.m.
Just out of interest, what machine do you use?
A much-hacked IBM5170. In other words a PC/AT. Admittedly I have the
later version motherboard with the 16MHz clock crystal. There is a
486-kludgeboard in place of the 80286 processor so the thing can run
linux. Apart from that, the only non-original bit is the hard disk, an
IDE drive.I am using an IBM5151 MDA monitor too...
-tony
3:56 p.m.
On 11/24/2013 01:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Well, you just need a second one, which can then handle all of the
spell-checking load :-)
Just out of
interest, what machine do you use?
A much-hacked IBM5170. In other words a PC/AT. Admittedly I have the
later version motherboard with the 16MHz clock crystal. There is a
486-kludgeboard in place of the 80286 processor so the thing can run
linux.
5:12 p.m.
> A much-hacked IBM5170. In other words a PC/AT.
Admittedly I have the
> later version motherboard with the 16MHz clock crystal. There is a
> 486-kludgeboard in place of the 80286 processor so the thing can run
> linux.
On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, Jules Richardson wrote:
Well, you just need a second one, which can then
handle all of the
spell-checking load :-)
The OED is available on CD-ROM!
Version 1 seems promising. It's just the full text, and could presumably
be accessed with anything that you can rig up that can read the CD-ROm
file system.
Unfortunately, version 2 apparently added ridiculous copy protection that
never worked right, and made it unusable.
SOME OEDs are surprisingly reasonable on eBay!
I saw a version 1.1 of the CD-ROm for about $100! BUT, does 1.1 have
that f'ing copy protection disaster?
There were also very nice deals on the OED compact edition.
(NOTE: do NOT confuse that with the "concise" edition, which is a marginal
dictionary. The "compact" edition is the real thing, but photographically
reduced to put 4 or 9 pages on each side of each sheet)
Are there any spell-chequers available without auto-correct, but which
could flag words not in their lexicon (reverse video?)
Context sensitivity might also be useful, although even that won't always
do the job. On the closed captions on the TV, I just saw a mention that
"due to static, astronauts would have to be lexically grounded". Do ANY
spell-shequers provide lexical grounding??!? I could really use THAT.
One of the obvious problems with spell-chequing for folk such as us, is
that our vocabulary is not "standard".
30+ years ago, I designed, but never finished, a heuristic system. The
idea was to start out with a VERY tiny word list, or even none at all.
Every word that it didn't recognize would require Correct, Ignore (leave
it, but it's not something I'll use again), or Add to word list.
It would NOT have been successful in the market! Besides the hardware at
the time being inadequate in both speed and access of the list, the
general public would have HATED it.
1) People judge a program based on their first couple of sessions with it.
And that system would be miserable for the first few sessions, with
interaction required for damn near every word. Over time, the word list
would grow until it was an almost exact match for YOUR writing. But until
then, it would be slower and more work than commercial systems that only
include "ordinary" words.
2) It assumes that you KNOW the correct spelling, and simply need a
reminder when you hit wrong keys. It is NOT suitable for people who don't
have a clue how to spell anything, and expect MICROS~1 WEIRD to tell them.
3) A word list comparison, without context sensitivity is useless for
people who don't even know what the correct word is, and don't know the
difference between "accept" V "except", "too" V
"two" V "to", "their" V
"there" V "they're", etc.
That also plays into the issue of why a GIANT word list doesn't solve the
problem. If "hte" and/or "teh" were words in the wordlist, then the
spell-chequer would be useless.
d) Does not make sill corrections without informing
me.
Although "sill" was probably not his intent, it IS prob'ly gonna
be in the
word list.
4) specialized vocabulary.
Tony would want a lot of technical terms.
and things such as signal names.
Some people would want some colloquialisms. Should "ain't" be in the word
list? I remember trying out Manfield's "Electric Webster, and being told
that "deli" is "NOT A VALID WORD".
Should it enforce a preference for "till" V "until" V
"'til" V "til"?
Should the word list include "MicroSloth"?
Why SHOULDN'T the word list include proper names that you use regularly?
I also tried to adapt similar heuristic algorithms to OCR - hire the
neighbor's kid to type everything in red on the graphics display; after a
few pages, MOST OCRs successfully; after a lot of pages, you've
successfully added any consistent font (NOT handwriting!)
I sure had a lot of projects that I never finished, and never will. :-(
3828
days inactive
3831
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14 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com -
shumaker＠att.net -
xmechanic＠landcomp.net