Tools

• all scripts: /tools/
• data model: /doc/sql/tools.sql

The Big Idea

The Tools

1. Spell Checker

   Files:

   • ispell-words
   • spell
   • spelling-dictionary-add-to
   • webspell

   webspell is a shell script wrapper to ispell, necessary because ispell requires the HOME environment variable to be set, and setting env(HOME) doesn't seem to work from AOLserver Tcl. It takes two arguments, a filename to be spell checked and a dictionary file of extra words, one word per line.

   The file ispell-words is such a dictionary file. The table ispell_words contains the same information as ispell-words, and is kept to make the editing of ispell-words easy. Any additions or deletions are made to the table, then the entire file is regenerated from the table.

   One table:

   create table ispell_words (
       ispell_word    varchar(100) primary key
   );
   

   To use:

   Say you have a form as follows, and you want the email_body to be spellchecked when the user pushes Submit:

   <form method=post action="email-send">
   
   <input type=text name="email_to" size=30>
   <input type=text name="email_subject" size=40>
   <textarea name="email_body" rows=10 cols=50></textarea>
   <input type=submit value="Send">
   
   </form>
   
   

   Change the action to /tools/spell and specify the var_to_spellcheck and target_url as follows:

   <form method=post action="/tools/spell">
   
   <input type=hidden name="var_to_spellcheck" value="email_body">
   <input type=hidden name="target_url" value="/fullpath/email-send">
   
   <input type=text name="email_to" size=30>
   <input type=text name="email_subject" size=40>
   <textarea name="email_body" rows=10 cols=50></textarea>
   <input type=submit value="Send">
   
   </form>
   
   

   The user will have the chance to correct any misspellings and then they'll be redirected, with all form variables intact, to the target_url.

   Make sure that all scripts are executable and that the UNIX utility ispell is in /usr/local/bin/. Also, the file ispell-words should contain the same words as the table ispell_words (it's fine if they both start out empty).

   The lovely spell checker was written by Jin Choi (jsc@arsdigita.com) with some finishing touches by Eve Andersson (eveander@arsdigita.com).