Sentry Spelling Checker Engine
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New features for Embedded Systems and Web Servers
Release date: 1 October 1999
Wintertree Software is pleased to announce the release of Sentry Spelling Checker Engine version 5.12. This new version includes several new features that make it easier for software developers to add spelling checkers to ROM-based, embedded systems and Web servers.
Spelling checkers, including Sentry, work by checking text against a dictionary of words known to be spelled correctly. Any words not in the dictionary are reported as misspelled. Typically, the dictionaries are compressed, indexed data structures that are stored in disk files. Accessing the dictionaries as files is incompatible with embedded systems that lack file storage, and the indexed nature of the dictionary files precludes sharing dictionaries among "threads" in highly concurrent applications such as servers without the need for blocking mechanisms such as semaphores. The new version of Sentry solves both of these problems by introducing memory-based dictionaries. Memory-based dictionaries are initialized data structures that are linked directly to an application which uses Sentry. They are strictly read-only, so they can be burned into ROM or shared safely among threads without serialization. Because embedded systems often have limited ROM space available, Sentry comes with American and British English dictionaries in three sizes: 25,000 words, 50,000 words, and 100,000 words. A utility program which converts Wintertree Software's file-based dictionaries to memory-based data structures is included with Sentry.
The new version of Sentry also includes a low-level API that is fully thread safe without need for serialization. Serialization is undesirable in Web servers because it potentially causes many threads of execution to wait while one thread accesses a shared resource. Sentry's new API, combined with memory-based dictionaries, makes it possible to create highly concurrent servers that can check spelling of text submitted by thousands of users simultaneously without risk of delays caused by serialization blocking.
The changes in the new version of Sentry support increased demand for spelling checkers in embedded systems such as hand-held devices, and for concurrent, multi-user spelling checker applications such as servers for Web-based e-mail and form entry.
The new features are available in the Sentry Spelling Checker Engine Source SDK (see catalog for pricing). See http://www.wintertreesoftware.com/dev/ssce/sourcesdk.html for more information.
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