Have your BBC edit your typing with a spelling checker. David Williams reports

Spell Check is a disk-based program which will check your spelling on a BBC Model B microcomputer using Wordwise.

The program comes on two disks, one for the main program and the other containing the dictionary. I tested it using a BBC B with the new AMS 3" disk drives.

Beebug provide the disks together with a well laid out, easy-to-follow instruction manual. The program is also largely menu-drive, making reference back to the manual a rare occurence.

The program is easier to run using two disk drives, but can be worked quite satisfactorily with only one. I found that because the program uses the disk drives a lot and, initially at least, the system has to do a lot of reading the writing, the very much faster 3" drives were a boon. Like most Beebug products, there is no problem making a backup copy, always a wise move with disks.

Assuming that you have already typing in the text of what you wish to check using Wordwise, you then save it onto a disk. The Spellcheck main program disk is then inserted into a drive, booted up and run. The first menu of options appears on screen and the first thing to do is to nominate the drive(s) that you are going to use for the dictionary and text disks.

Next, using the Load option, you feed the unedited text previously saved back into the computer. Nominating spelling check as an option you then are asked if you wish to be attended or unattended. This means you can either go off and do something else while the computer sorts through the dictionary, marking anything it fails to understand and later coming back to correct items. The other option simply means that you actually do the corrections word by word.

If you have left it to do the checking unattended you can hear a bleep each time it places a market, and then at the end of the check the computer flashes and bleeps until you come back. I found that it takes about 15 minutes to check 3,000 words.

When you run through it again you are offered four options: 'F' which will place the word into the dictionary, 'X' which will place the word into a temporary dictionary - i.e. if it is the name of a product or person which is only applicable to that particular piece of text, but appears more than once, 'S' which ignores the word and doesn't file it and 'C' which gives you the option to correct the spelling, once corrected the computer then looks at the dictionary to see if it is there, if it is it carries on, if not it leaves you with the previous three options.

Having completed the check you then resave the file back to disc and reload it into Wordwise for printing. The spellchecker automatically ignores any control codes that may be within the text.

The dictionary disk comes with about 6,000 words on it, which at first sight seems perfectly adequate. However, when you start to use the program for the first time it soon becomes clear that the 6,000 words is nowhere like enough, so using the program the first time can be a little time-consuming since obviously it fails to recognise a large number of words, so you have to spend some considerable amount of time adding words to the dictionary. The total capacity of the dictionary disk is only limited by the size of the disk - for the usual 40 track 100K disk this means that you can get about 16,000 words onto it, but if you have 80 track with 200 or 400K the size of the potential dictionary increases proportionally.

The way the dictionary disk is formatted does at first slow down the speed at which words can be added to the dictionary. Each letter is allocated a certain number of bytes on the disk, so if, for example, you have filled up the 'B's the computer will then move around on the disk all the words, making more space for the letter. This can be a little tedious at first since it does take some time to move everything around, but what it does mean is that all words beginning with a certain letter are grouped together, so that checking is speeded up and later use of the program is much faster.

Since the program is not protected, making a backup copy is no problem, and it's a good idea to make a different dictionary disk for any varying use you make of text. For example, you could make one for dealing with all private correspondence and another which may be to do with a hobby or other activity and one to deal with any business - the options are endless.

Being a somewhat enthusiastic rather than accurate typist I found the program to be invaluable, and once I had used it a few times and added to the dictionary, it is fast and reliable. In the New Year, Beebug are planning to release a version which will work with View, but at present anyone who uses the BBC machine as a word processor with Wordwise to any large degree will find Spell Check is a worthwhile investment.

Features 4/5
Presentation 4/5
Performance 4/5
User Interface 4/5
Reliability 4/5
Value For Money 4/5