SpellBox v1.1 by Avi Drissman, drissman@acm.org http://detroit.freenet.org/~drissman/newton/ Requirements A Newton device with Newton OS 2.1 or greater. (That means a MessagePad 2000, 2100, or eMate. It's been tested on a MessagePad 2000 only. There shouldn't be any problems with any others, though.) About 6K free on a store. Purpose In the Newton OS 2.1 there is a spelling checker. It's most famous for its appearance in the NewtWorks word processor, although there are several third-party product which bring spell-checking to other places in the Newton. Until now, there was no way to quickly look up a word in the dictionary, though. Either you typed it in the word processor or spell-checked it, or scribbled it in the Notepad and used a third-party solution. Both ways are inconvenient. SpellBox ends that madness. You can quickly look up words in the built-in dictionary and look at alternative spellings. Installation Use the Newton Connection Utilities program that came with your Newton device to download the included package named "SpellBox.pkg". If you installed the SpellButton package that came with previous versions of SpellBox, remove it. It is no longer needed. Use SpellBox has one slip. Along the top is a dotted line. On that line you should write the word you wish to check. Below the line is a button named "Spell Check". Tap that button to check the spelling of the word written on the line above. Below the button is a blank area. It either has status messages (i.e. that the word was spelled correctly) or a scrolling list of suggested alternatives in spelling. There is an Easter Egg hidden in SpellBox. For those of you still puzzling out the one in Avi's Backdrop, this one is simpler. A lot simpler. Think subtle. In fact, its solution could be considered a clue to the Avi's Backdrop egg. Configuration To configure SpellBox, tap the info button([i]) and select "Prefs". This opens the prefs slip, where you can decide whether or not you wish to have SpellBox place a button on your backdrop's status bar. What's Up With the Cursive Recognizer The cursive handwriting recognizer has the option to automatically add words that it does not recognize to the Personal Word List. That's very nice when you are writing long stretches of text, and are vigilant in correcting the recognizer. But this feature of the cursive recognizer interacts with SpellBox in a peculiar way. When you write a word on the line for SpellBox to check, the cursive recognizer turns it into text. If it doesn't recognize the word--if the word is not in the dictionary--having the "add words to the Personal Word List" set would cause the cursive recognizer to add the word to the user dictionary. Then, when you tapped "Check Spelling", SpellBox would find the word in your personal word list and declare it spelled correctly. The upshot of the whole deal is that when the cursive recognizer is on, and the "add words to the Personal Word List" is enabled, any word written on the line would be recognized as correct, even when it is not! Since this situation is undesirable, SpellBox won't run if both the cursive recognizer and the auto-add feature are enabled. There are two solutions to this problem. If you really like the cursive recognizer, you'll have to disable the "add words to the Personal Word List" option to make SpellBox run. The other option is to switch to the printing recognizer. Unfortunately, I know of no way around this problem. I sincerely apologize to those users who are unable to use SpellBox because of this limitation. If I find a workaround in the future, I will include it, but I don't anticipate being able to find one. Version History Version 1.0 (22 March 1998) Initial release Version 1.1 (5 April 1998) Internal tweaks to remove unnecessary code, fixed stupid bug Incorporated optional backdrop button into prefs (SpellButton is obsolete) Legal stuff The application SpellBox is freeware. Please feel free to give a copy to anyone you wish. You are not allowed to charge any fees for distributing it. You may not modify the package in any way, and must transmit the package and this documentation file together at all times. Avi Drissman will not be held liable for any damage caused by the SpellBox package. Even though Avi Drissman has worked his darnedest to try to eliminate all problems in this package, some may still exist, so you use this package at your own risk. If you don't like it, erase it from your Newton device. That is the only recourse you have if SpellBox does not suit your needs. The package and this documentation are copyright © 1997-8 Avi Drissman. All rights reserved.