IBM Computer, Laptops and Servers

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Thinkpad Implement Server-Side Spell Checking with Microsoft Word by Jason

According to the indictment, Jones would steal various IBM and Penguin computer servers from Verisign's warehouse in Virginia and sell them to Johnson. Johnson would then sell the servers to several individuals, who would sometimes place them for sale on eBay. As a result of this scheme, the indictment alleges that Jones and Johnson caused Verisign to lose more than $120, 000 worth of computer equipment. In the indictment, Jones and Johnson are charged in three counts with causing the interstate transportation of stolen property, namely IBM 330 and 335 servers, in violation of 18 U.S.C.

Microsoft Fisher

Laptop Computers If you've ever built a Web application that relies heavily on user input--a

6. Spell checking with your computer isn't enough. Many words sound similar but have different meanings, and spell check won't catch it. This is especially true if English is your 2nd language. An accent or slang can be charming when spoken, but can look incompetent when written.

Laptop Computer Web-based message board application, for example--you've probably wondered how

4 Edits are made to Microsoft Word documents via the Documents To Go® application. Some editing functionality is not supported, such as multiple font sizes and spell check. During synchronization with the desktop, edits are copied to the desktop version of the document. 5 Changes are made on the device via the Documents To Go application. Some editing functionality is not supported, such as multiple font sizes and spell check.

Desktop Computer to add spell-check capability to it. Most higher-tier Web applications (such as

Notebooks MSN's Hotmail) provide this feature in one way or another, and it can go a long

Lenovo way to separate you from the amateurs if you can provide this functionality on

Hard Drive your site as well. But how? The most direct approach, of course, might be to

Travelstar write your own server-side, spell-checking component in Visual Basic or C++, and

Gateway while this would certainly accomplish the goal (months later!), it's

Laptop Parts unnecessarily reinventing the wheel. If you're running Microsoft Word on your

Software Web server, you can easily automate the use of its proofreading capabilities for

Hard Drives your own Web pages, and it's a lot less work than you might think. In this

Electronics article, we'll show you how to use these capablilities to implement

Canon spell-checking like that shown in Figure A.

Desktop Pc Figure A: We'll show you how to implement Word's spell-checking in

Desktop Computers server-side ASP.

Think Pad OverviewAs an example, we're going to build a simple Web form that

Repair allows a user to submit some text for spell-checking. The results will then be

Data Recovery displayed on another page, along with suggestions for correcting each spelling

Cisco error. In addition, when the user clicks on any of these suggestions, the

Keyboard misspelled word will be replaced with the suggestion and the results

Monitor redisplayed. In this way, a submission with multiple errors can be incrementally

Desktop corrected until no errors remain. Our particular sample application is rather

Infosys useless, all things considered, but its simplicity will allow us to illustrate

Refurbished Laptops the technique without the additional distractions introduced by a more

Wipro complicated real-world example. Once you've learned how to implement server-side

Lap Top spell-checking with ASP and Microsoft Word, you can take this approach to a more

Refurbished useful and feature-rich Web application like a message board or email

Memory application.

Intel To begin our approach, we'll first launch Word, invisibly, on the Web server.

As400 Then, we'll create an empty document, into which we'll stuff the content

Averatec submitted through a Web form by the user. Then, we'll invoke Word's native

Hardware spell-check capabilities to retrieve a collection of spelling errors and their

Dual Xeon suggested corrections. Our Web page will display these results in a table and

Storage will allow the user to replace misspelled words with the provided suggestions.

Seagate Once this process is complete, we'll close down the instance of Word. And all of

Computer Sales this will be completely transparent to the end-user. That said, let's take a

Computer Hardware look at the process up close.

Printers Getting something to spell-checkOur first step is to create the simple

Technology HTML form that we'll present to the user for his submission. The form should

Mainframe look something like the illustration in Figure B. Go ahead and create a new HTML

Samsung document, enter the code from Listing A, and save the file as

Computer Repair SpellCheck.html.

Used Computers Figure B: We'll submit this form to our server-side

Network spell-checker.

Digital Cameras This form is simple enough that its construction and function are

Desktops self-evident, so we won't say much more about it. The only thing we do want to

Cognos point out is that we're soliciting the user's input in a <textarea> called

Hosting txtSubmit, which we post to an ASP page called SpellCheck.asp. It's this ASP

Netfinity page that does the real work, and we'll spend the remainder of this article

Internet discussing how it gets the job done.

Cheap Computer Listing A: The HTML form <html>

Digital Camera <head>

Printer <title>

Xseries Server-Side Spell Check

Maxtor </title>

Data Storage </head>

Hitachi <body>

Rational <font size=5>

Websphere <b>Server-Side Spell Checking<br>

Battery with ASP and Word</b><br><br>

It Support </font>

Western Digital <table>

Music <tr>

Networks <td>

Toner <form method=post action=SpellCheck.asp>

Cheap Laptops <b>Spell Check the Following:</b><br>

Wholesale <textarea name=txtSubmit rows=10

Brother cols=58></textarea><br>

Netvista </td>

Camera </tr>

Networking <tr>

Sharp <td align=right>

Cheap <input type=submit value="Spell Check">

Windows </form>

Monitors </td>

Linux </tr>

Computer Support </table>

Used Laptops </body>

Cameras </html>

Scanners

Panasonic Getting the job doneFigure B depicts the results of submitting the form

Workstation shown in Figure A. As you can see, this submission contains seven spelling

Iseries mistakes, and each has one or more suggestions for correcting the error. The

Backup user can click any one of these suggestions, whereupon the page is refreshed to

Information Technology reflect the change. Listing B contains the code required to make this happen.

Routers Next we'll turn our attention to exactly what the SpellCheck.asp is doing.

180gxp Listing B: Let the Spell-checking begin! <%

Notebook Battery option explicit

Security 'Dimension object variables

Lotus dim objWord 'as Word.Application

Virus dim objDocument 'as Word.Document

Thinkpad T42 dim objErrors 'as Word.ProofreadingErrors

Thinkpad 600 dim objError 'as Word.Range

Thinkpad 600e dim wdSuggestions 'as Word.SpellingSuggestions

Thinkpad 570 dim wdSuggestion 'as Word.SpellingSuggestion

Thinkpad 600x dim strSubmission, strModified, intCounter

Thinkpad 390x const wdDoNotSaveChanges = 0

Thinkpad A31 'Capture submitted text from Form or QueryString

Thinkpad X20 strSubmission = request("txtSubmit")

Bios Update 'Echo submission back to the user

Laptops with response

Toshiba .write "<font size=5><b>"

Laptop Battery .write "Spelling Results</b></font>"

Thinkpad .write "<br><br>"

Microsoft .write "<b>You submitted the following:</b><br>"

Laptop Computers .write "&quot;" & strSubmission & "&quot;<br><br>"

Laptop Computer end with

Desktop Computer 'Launch Word and create a new document

Notebooks set objWord = server.createObject("Word.Application")

Lenovo set objDocument = objWord.documents.add

Hard Drive 'Insert the user's submitted text into the document

Travelstar objWord.selection.typeText cstr(strSubmission)

Gateway 'Retrieve and display spelling errors

Laptop Parts set objErrors = objDocument.spellingErrors

Software if objErrors.count then 'there are errors

Hard Drives with response

Electronics .write "<table><tr><td><b>Spelling Error&nbsp;"

Canon .write "</b></td><td><b>Suggestion</b></td></tr>"

Desktop Pc end with

Desktop Computers for each objError in objErrors

Think Pad 'Display the misspelled word

Repair response.write "<tr valign=top><td>"

Data Recovery response.write objError.Text & "</td><td>"

Cisco 'Get spelling suggestions for the word

Keyboard set wdSuggestions = _

Monitor objWord.getSpellingSuggestions(objError.text)

Desktop if wdSuggestions.count < 1 then

Infosys response.write "No suggestions"

Refurbished Laptops else

Wipro intCounter = 0

Lap Top for each wdSuggestion in wdSuggestions

Refurbished intCounter = intCounter + 1

Memory strModified = replace(strSubmission, _

Intel objError.text, wdSuggestion.name, 1, 1)

As400 with response

Averatec 'Construct anchor tag

Hardware .write "<a href=SpellCheck.asp?"

Dual Xeon .write "txtSubmit="

Storage .write server.URLEncode(strModified)

Seagate .write ">" & wdSuggestion.name & "</a>"

Computer Sales end with

Computer Hardware 'Display a pipe-delimiter except at the end

Printers if intCounter < wdSuggestions.count then

Technology response.write " | "

Mainframe end if

Samsung next

Computer Repair end if

Used Computers response.write "</td></tr>"

Network next

Digital Cameras with response

Desktops 'Show the user number of errors found

Cognos .write "</table>"

Hosting .write "<br><b>" & objErrors.count

Netfinity .write " spelling error(s) found:</b>"

Internet .write " Click suggestions to correct."

Cheap Computer end with

Digital Camera else 'no errors were found

Printer response.write "<b>No spelling errors found.</b>"

Xseries end if

Maxtor 'Close running instance of Word and destroy objects

Data Storage objWord.Quit wdDoNotSaveChanges

Hitachi set objDocument = Nothing

Rational set objWord = Nothing

Websphere set objErrors = Nothing

Battery set wdSuggestions = Nothing

It Support %>

Western Digital

Music We begin, as always, by declaring the variables we'll be using to carry out

Networks the spell-checking process. In addition to a few variables for holding onto

Toner ordinary data, we'll need several object variables to represent native Word

Cheap Laptops components. In VBScript, where all variables are actually variants, these

Wholesale variables are not strictly typed; however, you should be aware of the actual

Brother object types (commented in the code above). You can automate Word's

Netvista spell-checking facilities in a conventional Visual Basic application just as

Camera easily as you can in ASP, but to do so, you'll need to know the object types in

Networking question. Figure C shows the basic relationship between some of the Word objects

Sharp and collections relevant to this example.

Cheap Figure C: These are the relevant objects in Word's object

Windows model.

Monitors After declaring your variables, you then proceed to capture the user's text

Linux submission into the variable strSubmission. Technically, the precise way to

Computer Support reference a submitted form field is

Used Laptops request.form("txtSubmit") however, the reference to the

Cameras form object can be omitted. When it's left out, ASP searches each available

Scanners collection in the request object for a member with the provided name in the

Panasonic following order: QueryString, Form, Cookies, ClientCertificate, ServerVariables.

Workstation We'll be making use of this feature later in our code, as you'll see. For now,

Iseries on the initial pass through SpellCheck.asp, request("txtSubmit") retrieves the

Backup submission the user typed into the form (SpellCheck.html). The next thing you do

Information Technology is echo back to the user the text that he submitted. This serves a couple of

Routers purposes: it allows the user to look back at his submission to locate each error

180gxp displayed below, and it permits him to see the incrementally corrected form of

Notebook Battery his submission as he selects spelling suggestions.

Security How do you spell relief?Now the real fun begins. You use the

Lotus CreateObject method of the Server object to launch an instance of Microsoft

Virus Word. In a conventional desktop application, you would need to set the Visible

Thinkpad T42 property of this application instance to False to prevent its being displayed on

Thinkpad 600 the user's desktop; however, this isn't necessary when the application instance

Thinkpad 600e is created on a Web server. Once you have an instance of Word running in the

Thinkpad 570 background of our Web server, create a new document by calling the Add method of

Thinkpad 600x Word's Documents collection. Initially, this document is empty, so you can now

Thinkpad 390x proceed to fill it with the submission made by your user, which is stored in

Thinkpad A31 strSubmission. When the document is first created, no selection is set (in fact,

Thinkpad X20 there is nothing to select, since the document contains no content), and

Bios Update therefore, when you pass the user's submitted text to the TypeText method of the

Laptops Selection object, this text is merely dropped in at the current cursor position,

Toshiba the beginning of the document.

Laptop Battery Now, you need to see what spelling errors (if any) the submission contains.

Thinkpad To make this determination, you don't actually have to do any work at all, since

Microsoft our Word document automatically populates its own SpellingErrors collection on

Laptop Computers the fly. All you have to do, as you can see in the code, is get a reference to

Laptop Computer this collection and then loop through it. So, for each error that we find in the

Desktop Computer collection, we'll display the misspelled word and then get Word's suggestions

Notebooks for how to correct the mistake.

Lenovo The Word Application object contains a method called GetSpellingSuggestions

Hard Drive that returns a collection of spelling suggestions for any text passed to it. So

Travelstar all you do is call this method, sending it each misspelled word (from the

Gateway Document's SpellingErrors collection); then, iterate through the resulting

Laptop Parts collection of suggestions that Word returns.

Software For each suggestion provided to you, you' re going to display it and create

Hard Drives an anchor tag to enclose it. This anchor tag encapsulates a quick and clever

Electronics method for replacing a misspelled word with one of the suggestions. The approach

Canon is to create a string variable, strModified, in which we use VBScript's replace

Desktop Pc function to exchange the misspelled word, held in objError.text, with the

Desktop Computers spelling suggestion provided from Microsoft Word's built-in dictionaries, held

Think Pad in wdSuggestion.name. You'll then include this value with the QueryString in the

Repair HREF attribute of our anchor tag.

Data Recovery Remember our discussion about the sequence in which ASP scans the available

Cisco collections in the Request object for our txtSubmit member? This is where we

Keyboard take full advantage of the flexibility afforded to us by this generic

Monitor referencing capability. Our anchor will point to this self-same ASP page as its

Desktop target, passing strModified as the value for txtSubmit.

Infosys Originally, this value came from a form field, but on subsequent entries to

Refurbished Laptops the page, it will come from the QueryString. This allows you, one word at a

Wipro time, to correct misspellings in the submitted text and simplifies your coding

Lap Top considerably. One caveat: you need to remember to URLEncode the text before you

Refurbished submit it back to the page through the QueryString, because the submission may

Memory contain carriage returns, line feeds, or HTML-reserved characters such as the

Intel ampersand (&) or question mark (?), and you need these to be properly

As400 preserved rather than interpreted.

Averatec Once you've finished traversing the collection of misspelled words (if there

Hardware were any), you'll display for the user the total number of mistakes found. And

Dual Xeon of course, if there are no errors at all, you'll indicate this to the user.

Storage At this point, the process is essentially complete. All that remains is to

Seagate close down your running instance of Microsoft Word. You do this with the Quit

Computer Sales method of the Application object, passing the constant wdDoNotSaveChanges to

Computer Hardware indicate that we want to discard the contents of our working document. We then

Printers clean up our memory utilization by setting all of our object variables to

Technology Nothing, and we're all finished.

Mainframe A few closing words about WordYou've seen here that it isn't terribly

Samsung difficult to control Microsoft Word in the background on your Web server, and

Computer Repair that in this way, you can leverage any of its many built-in features for use by

Used Computers your own Active Server Pages. In this case, we implemented spell-checking

Network functionality; however, you could just as easily add grammar checking. In

Digital Cameras addition, a possible enhancement to this example would be to explore the use of

Desktops custom dictionaries. Word can reference up to 10 custom dictionaries

Cognos simultaneously, allowing users to add their own words not found in Microsoft

Hosting Word's built-in dictionary. Support for multiple languages is also another

Netfinity direction in which you could take this example. A word of warning: this approach

Internet is fairly memory-intensive, because of its reliance upon complex objects and

Cheap Computer involved processes running in the background on your Web server. If you're

Digital Camera looking to implement this technique on a site with heavy traffic, you'll need a

Printer pretty beefy server. In addition, you'll probably want to take certain

Xseries optimization measures, such as launching only one instance of Word in your

Maxtor Global.asa, making it available to all running sessions, and leaving it open

Data Storage instead of closing it at the end of SpellCheck.asp. In any event, for many

Hitachi applications, this remote automation of Microsoft Word will allow you to add

Rational functionality to your Web site that you may have only dreamed about before.

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