Re: Package Proposal: SpellChecker

Maybe you should consider having it depend on the Aspell binary being installed, rather then the pspell extension. Reason is, the pspell extension is completely unavailable on Windows, and is a royal pain to get working. Whereas the Aspell binary is a wiz to install and is available on all operating systems. You could use shelexec() to send the info to the binary and then have it write a temp file. I actually have a script (a very nice script) which does this. Lately I haven't seen many scripts which use the pspell extension, it seems to have *really* fallen by the way side. If I were you I'd look at the binary. Make it a heck of a lot easier on the developer. - Stan Tony Bibbs wrote:

I did a quick package search on 'spell' on pear.php.net and found no entries so I figured I'd offer a small class I drew up this week for spell checking in PHP. It does require --with-pspell to be installed. Quick feature run down: 1) Supports any languages supported by pspell/aspell. 2) Supports personalized word lists 3) Supports highlighting of misspelled words in text that is checked - Highlight method is customizable. Default is to use a <span> with yellow background 4) Can return suggested spellings of mispelled words. - By default the <span> tag that does the highlight sticks suggestions in title attribute

      allowing them to be viewed by simply hovering the mouse over it
   - If default behavior isn't desired, methods exist to grab the suggestions and do custom
     handling

5) Works fine with HTML/XML

    - This is done by saving copy of the original text we are checking and then stripping out
       HTML/XML, doing the spell check and replacing the mispellings in the original text
6) Goes without saying but it is a lightweight and OO and should plugin easily to existing

applicaitons Only down side is you will probably spend more time getting aspell/pspell working and recompiling PHP than you will with trying to implement it. If accepted I'd seek the proper PEAR category to put it in, I was thinking Tools and Utilities but I'd be open to suggestions. --Tony