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I'm working with OS X and all apps use the same spell checker, as far
as I know anyways.
I assumed the PC would have the equivalent and there would be a java
script step that launched the spell checker, it seems that's not the
case.

How would I perform a spell check on free flow text entered by a user
into a text field?

You can use AJAX like this guy:
http://me.eae.net/stuff/litespellchecker/litedemo.html

Other than that, there is no reliable way to perform this function. You
are not going to be able to do it well without some kind of server-side
functionality.

Jeremy

FP wrote:
> I'm working with OS X and all apps use the same spell checker, as far
> as I know anyways.
> I assumed the PC would have the equivalent and there would be a java
> script step that launched the spell checker, it seems that's not the
> case.
>
> How would I perform a spell check on free flow text entered by a user
> into a text field?
>

Jeremy wrote:
> You can use AJAX like this guy:
> http://me.eae.net/stuff/litespellchecker/litedemo.html
>
> Other than that, there is no reliable way to perform this function. You
> are not going to be able to do it well without some kind of server-side
> functionality.
>
> Jeremy

Just tried the site with Safari 1.3.1 it didn't work. I'll try again
tomorrow.
I'm developing on Apache with PHP and came across some documentation
which seemed to imply that the free flow text could be sent to the
server and an array of misspelled words returned. Is that what you
meant by server side scripting? If so, thanks, but that's way over my
head.

FP wrote:
> Is that what you
> meant by server side scripting?

Yep. That's what I meant.

> If so, thanks, but that's way over my
> head.

The best way to remedy that is to get your head right up there with it
If you're already a javascript programmer, learning PHP isn't all
that much of a stretch. There's actually a couple of server-side
javascript packages available as well.

Mind you, I'm not saying that a purely-client-side-javascript
spellchecker is *impossible*. On the contrary, it wouldn't be that hard
to implement. However, the javascript program would contain an enormous
dictionary, and your users would have to wait for it to load before the
spellchecking would work. That would be pretty annoying.

Jeremy

Jeremy wrote:
> The best way to remedy that is to get your head right up there with it
> If you're already a javascript programmer, learning PHP isn't all
> that much of a stretch. There's actually a couple of server-side
> javascript packages available as well.

I'm a FileMaker guy trying to figure out a little HTML, Java, & PHP to
make a website work the way I want it to. The spell check would have
been nice but can be left out if it's going to take a couple of days
for me to try to make sense of it.

Thanks for the help.

JRS: In article <wQ1og.123654$ >,
dated Tue, 27 Jun 2006 03:44:28 remote, seen in
news:comp.lang.javascript, Jeremy <> posted :
>
>Mind you, I'm not saying that a purely-client-side-javascript
>spellchecker is *impossible*. On the contrary, it wouldn't be that hard
>to implement. However, the javascript program would contain an enormous
>dictionary, and your users would have to wait for it to load before the
>spellchecking would work. That would be pretty annoying.

Basic English needs only about a thousand words; that's not enormous, if
cached. User's additional words, generally topic-specific, could maybe
be held in a cookie.

Encourage simple writing and the eschewing of surplusage.

Remember that spelling checkers serve two purposes; they can help those
who use words that they do not know how to spell, and they can help
those who can spell but do not always hit the intended key. The latter
class most often make errors in common words.

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