[Javascript] Spell Checker

[Del Wegener]

>
> Sure the client-side behaviour of "Use Ajax to do spellcheck via a
> WebService" is easy enough.  But how does one implement the
> WebService?
>
> If you build a solution that handles only a single word because that's
> all the current design requires, how well will it scale to a solution
> where the user is typing a whole sentence?  .. or if the input is
> changed to a textarea (implying potentially MUCH more text than a
> single word or sentence)

Some current quiz questions have multiple word answers.
Complete sentence answers will be desired in the future. (Then I would like 
grammer checks as well)


> Del's use was for a quiz.  I wonder how many teachers accept
> incorrectly spelled answers as "good enough" for full credit.  Is this
> a nice-to-have or a need-to-have feature?  Are the quiz answers likely
> to be found in a dictionary of standard english, or are you going to
> have to add the answers (and potential misspellings)  There are a lot
> of considerations.

Most of my quiz questions are about mathematics.  (maybe some other 
engineering work)
Therefore, many of the words are not in standard english dictionaries.
At the present time spelling must be correct, because I simply compare the 
student's response to the "right answer".
I want the spell checker to provide the student with the ability to correct 
his/her spelling prior to submission.
I would classify implementation of a spell checker as an extremely desirable 
feature, but not essential.

I thought there would be canned PERL program which would perform such spell 
checking, but maybe not.

What I keep finding is Ajax and Text::Aspell or implementations to be 
installed on Microsoft servers rather than Apache.

I appreciate everyone's comments, but have not yet found the solution I am 
looking for.

Del