Re: More Widespread Adoption of Enchant ...

Op Do, 2011-09-15 om 00:50 -0600 skryf Kevin Atkinson:
> On Thu, 15 Sep 2011, F Wolff wrote:
>
> > I expressed myself badly. What I meant was: in the two other non-English
> > languages I write in, missing words is a somewhat frequent problem with
> > the spell checkers, simply because the spell checkers aren't as good as
> > the English ones. From "our side" it seems as if the English ones
> > (either of Hunspell or Aspell) works really well, since it almost never
> > has any missing words (maybe because I'm also writing as a second
> > language speaker with reduced vocabulary). So while I know that
> > suggestion quality is an important part of making a good spell checker,
> > I'm not sure that suggestion quality alone will convince people who are
> > used to evaluating a spell checker based on the missing words.
>
> You should not evaluate a spell checker engine based on missing words,
> that is a function of the dictionary used and not the spell checker
> engine.

I agree that missing words are to some extent an issue of the
dictionary. What I'm trying to convey is that "better suggestions" might
be a hard sell to people who's attention is distracted from this quality
issue when they (maybe incorrectly) focus their attention on coverage,
simply because that is the most obvious shortcoming of the spell checker
for their primary language. I think the number of people really caring
about the distinction between a "spell checker" and a "spell checker
engine" is limited, so it can quickly become a game of subtle wordings
and subtle issues - lost on many people where the spell checker for
their language has more than mere subtle shortcomings.

Unrecognised words are not only a function of the dictionary. Hunspell
for the first time made it possible to support many languages which were
completely unrealistic with Myspell, for example (I can't speak about
Aspell). That really affected coverage, simply because the dictionary
form of words is only one of thousands, and the support for rich
morphology is a crucial aspect of attaining good coverage (along with a
reasonable dictionary, of course).

Please understand that I'm not trying to criticise you, your work, or
Enchant (or anything, really) at all. I'm merely trying to give a view
on how things might be perceived by other people. I hope it helps!

Friedel

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