Contents
1. What is it?
2. Advantages
3. Where to get it?
4. Requirements
5. Basic, Advanced and Enterprise versions of Suggester software
6. Documentation
7. Java Code Samples
8. HTML Examples
9. Dictionaries
10. Release Notes
11. Licensing and Legal Issues
1. What is it?
Suggester Spell Check is a 100% pure Java library to provide local spell checking service.
And it is absolutely free for you to use with already pre-compiled dictionaries. Suggester Spell Check uses Basic Suggester Engine as a spellchecker.
What is the Suggester software?
In short - The Java program, providing recommendations for unknown words in user query for local search systems.
System administrator can create a list of preferred words and assign higher weight to such words.
As a basic implementation Suggester can serve as a spellchecker. In this case all words have the same weight.
But don't be confused about "basic implementation". It includes high speed suggestion engine,
based on fast edit-distance calculation algorithm enhanced with Lawrence Philips Metaphone algorithm and private fuzzy-matching algorithm.
2. Advantages
Smart suggestions:
The Suggester uses not only shortest edit-distance measure but also the Metaphone algorithm and on top of it private fuzzy-matching algorithm to place the closest replacement in the top position in the suggestion list. You can adjust influence from each algorithm using configuration file. Run English/American
Spelling Suggestions Test to see if Suggester is better then other spell-checkers in this respect.
Local service:
Unlike Google's Spelling API the Suggester library and a dictionary file is all you need to have local spellchecking service fully under your control. No need to worry about exposure on Internet, connectivity problems and availability of external service. No hidden fees as well.
Multi-lingual:
At present time two free dictionaries are available for download: English/American and Russian.
Full English/American dictionary contains about 200,000 words, including geographical places and often used names. Full Russian dictionary contains more then 1,300,000 words (including variants).
Suggester has been tested with other European languages, including the one with biggest dictionary - Polish.
Send us email if you need Suggester Spell Check with other languages.
Custom dictionaries:
The Index Builder allow users to create custom dictionaries from user's word-list. It can also be used to extract all words from the dictionary and modify existing dictionaries. The Index Builder is available under commercial license, however we can create for free the index for you (using your word-list) for other then English languages.
Just send us email with request to create the index.
High dictionary compression:
The word dictionary is compressed not only on a hard drive, but also in memory.
Full English dictionary contains about 200,000 words and it takes 236Kb file on a hard drive and about 2Mb space in memory. Other languages are compressed even better.
For example, full Russian dictionary contains more then 1,300,000 words (including variants) and it takes 315Kb file on a hard drive and again about 2Mb space in memory. Comparing original word list file in UTF-8 format with size more then 30Mb, the compression ratio is close to 1% (1.04% to be precise)!
High dictionary search and suggestion selection speed:
Dictionary case dependent / independent look-up takes about 0.002 / 0.005 ms per word, which comes to speed about 500,000 / 200,000 words per second. Suggestions search speed averages about 40 ms per set of suggestions for each unknown word on Pentium M 1.4Gz (with high quality of suggestions).
Portability:
The Suggester software entirely written in Java 1.2.
Runs on any Java® platform: Windows®, Mac OS®, Unix, Linux. Tested on JRE 1.2,
1.3, 1.4, 1.5.
Comparison table of Suggester and other popular spellchecking software:
Apache Java library "Jazzy", web site Dictionary.com, Microsoft Word 2000 and Google search engine.
3. Where to get it?
The home page for the Suggester Spell Check project can be found on the SoftCorporation LLC.
web site http://www.softcorporation.com/products/spellcheck.
There you also can find the information on how to download the latest release as
well as all other information you might need regarding this project.
Click here to Download Suggester Spell Check.
4. Requirements
o A Java 1.2 or later compatible virtual machine for your operating system.
o There is no other special requirements to run Suggester as a Spellchecker.
o To run Index Builder you may need up to 512 Mb (or more) of virtual memory.
5. Basic, Advanced and Enterprise versions of Suggester software
There are 3 different versions of Suggester software:
o Basic Suggester - (free) introduces only one dictionary, with all words assigned the same weight.
The Suggester Spell Check uses Basic Suggester.
o Advanced Suggester - (commercial) can use multiple dictionaries with different weights assigned to each dictionary. Also supports multiple languages.
o Enterprise Suggester - (commercial) uses all features from Advanced Suggester plus provides content dependent suggestions.
6. Documentation
The documentation is available for Advanced and Enterprise versions and is included in the
"doc" directory of download package.
7. Java Code Samples
Java code samples are included in the download package. Click on a link for more information on How to use Basic Suggester Spell Check.
8. HTML Examples
HTML examples are included in the download package.
Click here to run English Spell Check test.
Click here to run Russian Spell Check test.
9. Dictionaries
Click here to see and download Suggester dictionaries, including English medical dictionary
10. Release Notes
Keywords: SoftCorporation LLC., Java, free, software, spell check, spelling, spellcheck, free web service, free spellchecking web service, download, application