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Reference: Tools-Spelling

Background

Web based data collection via Forms is an integral part of many Sites. Increasingly, permitting the end user (we call them the Visitor to a Site) to provide the information themselves brings a Site's operation closer to the end user and, in general, is a GOOD thing. However, some data input fields ask for descriptions, comments, or other sentences and the classic spelling errors pop up way more than anyone would like.

To improve the quality of the information that is entered into the online forms, RidgeStar CAN activate a standard spell checking methodology to notify the Visitor about what may be an incorrectly spelled word. To demonstrate how this might work, enter a word or sentence in the form at the top of this page and click "Check Spelling":

General Conditions

The following conditions generally apply to the spell checking methodology on RidgeStar sites:

1. We use a generalized English dictionary. We know the whole world doesn't speak English (... "American"...), it just so happens that it's the standard language amongst RidgeStar's clients.
2. Activated on a field by field basis (is NOT active on all text input fields, by default)
3. Notifies the Visitor about words that might be misspelled
4. Will present a list of possible alternatives that the Visitor can review to determine if they meant something else
5. The spelling errors are "warnings" only and will NOT generally cause the page's functions to be terminated (meaning, database update pages will proceed and add the misspelled word). The Visitor will have to correct it themselves by re-filing the form (if they determine they would like to do so).

The Algorithm

RidgeStar has a lot of alternatives about how to customize this mechanism and we'd be the first to tell you that it is an effort that, like most things on the web, is continually being extended. However, the following methodology is how the RidgeStar Spelling logic basically works:

1. Strip any MySQL based character sequences that might exist in the text string (the data being checked)
2. Replace periods (.), the tilde(~), and RidgeStar bracketed sequences ([b],[p], etc.) with a single space
3. Remove special symbols from the text string, which includes the following

   , ; ( ) " # $ - ? / & : !

4. Scan the Text string a word at a time validating against the RidgeStar English based dictionary if the word is all lower case or mixed case (we ignore all UPPER case words)
5. If a word does not exist, present an error message identifying the word and a paragraph displaying the possible spelling alternatives