Addict Component Suite
Addictive Software has been developing component software tools for the Delphi and C++Builder markets for over a decade. This longevity is one of the keys to developing rich dictionary support and partnerships with many popular component tool vendors.
Addict includes many components and routines, but the core of its functionality is:
- Spelling Check - The timeless dialog-based process of checking text, suggesting replacements for misspelled words and allowing a user to act upon each potential problem.
- Live-Spelling - A slightly more modern solution of identifying misspelled words with red underlines and allowing a user to act upon each identified problem with a context menu.
- Thesaurus - The ability for a user to lookup a word (typically the word under the cursor), examine it's synonyms and choose an appropriate replacement.
- API - A complete set of APIs allowing for text parsing, dictionary lookup, text corrections, misspelling suggestions, thesaurus contexts and more.
Spelling Check
AddictSpell provides applications with a full featured spelling check component that gives a professional look and feel. AddictSpell mirrors, and in some ways exceeds, the functionality of several spelling check engines residing in commercial word processors.
Adding AddictSpell to an application (with the same functionality as the example above) is typically done with just a single line of code:
AddictSpell.CheckWinControl( RichEdit1, ctAll );
This same line of code is used to perform a spelling check on most Edit, Memo and RichEdit components. In addition, Addict supports many of the more popular third party controls such as DevExpress Editors, PlusMemo, WPTools and more.
This same level of simplicity carries through to the configuration system. If your users want to ignore HTML, load multiple dictionaries at once, or be prompted on repeated words, it's all easily accessible.
All dialogs shown by Addict are very customizable. Various features and functionality can be shown or hidden as your application requests. All dialogs are also fully replaceable and are supported in a wide variety of languages.
AddictSpell includes support for main dictionaries (highly compressed static lists of words typically representing a language) and custom dictionaries and custom dictionaries (dynamic lists of words to be ignored or automatically corrected that a user contributes to over time).
New mail dictionaries can be created with Addict's dictionary compiler (available in the PlusPack) and new custom dictionaries are formed by the end users of your product when adding a word to ignore or an auto-correct entry when performing a spelling check. The dialog above shows Addict's built in custom dictionary editor.
For long time users, check the upgrade information page for a more detailed look at how some of the features of Addict 3 have evolved since Addict 2.
Live-Spelling
Addict Professional ships with two RichEdit components. These components derive directly from the standard VCL RichEdit and DBRichEdit components for maximum compatibility with current applications.
In addition to its own RichEdit components, Addict includes a component which will subclass and automatically add support for Live-Spelling to many third party controls that use Microsoft's RichEdit control, including: DevExpress Editors, LMDTools, and even Borland's own TRichEdit.
The components are also capable of doing auto-correct as you type. This allows auto-corrections to happen automatically as they are typed. Common misspellings, such as 'teh' automatically change to 'the'.
All of this can be done without writing a single line of code!
Thesaurus
Addict comes with an updated version of Roget's Thesaurus, containing over 1000 context topics. Additional thesaurus files can be compiled with the Thesaurus compiler (available in the PlusPack).
The thesaurus component uses the same parsing architecture as does AddictSpell. Thus, the thesaurus can work on simple word lookups, or do automatic selection and word replacement for Strings, Edits, Memos, RichEdits, and a host of other third party controls.
API
Addict was written and designed from the ground up to be as robust and flexible as possible. Developers have complete API access to all of Addict's core features, including main dictionaries, control parsers, parsing engine, entities to ignore while parsing, custom dictionaries, suggestions generation, thesaurus file, and much more.
Supported Development Environments
The current version of Addict supports the following platforms:
- Delphi 4-7 and 2005-2007 win32
- C++Builder 4-6 and 2006-2007 win32
- Turbo Delphi Professional win32
- Turbo C++ Professional win32