[aspell-devel] Aspell: Updating Delphi example so that it works

[Jon P. Grewer]

Hello friends,

I am experimenting with spell checking and I really like the Aspell word 
similarity algorithm. 

I have two goals. 

1.  Get the Delphi Aspell example program working.
2.  Convert the existing word similarity algorithm into Delphi Pascal so 
that I can see if I can improve on it, though it is already quite good.

I will give back all improvements to this community.

So, for my first goal: 

I have successfully installed Aspell into WinXP pro.  I am able to drop 
files on the desktop icon and get them spell checked.  However, the 
Delphi GUI example is not able to find aspell-15.dll  It appears that 
there is something wrong with how the delphi program interacts with 
Aspell to retrieve settings. 

The following code generates exceptions:

   if assigned(key_info^.def)
   then s:=s+' '+key_info^.def;
   if assigned(key_info^.desc)
   then s:=s+' '+key_info^.desc;

If I comment out all lines that refer to the Def and Desc structures, 
the program runs ok.  What is troubling me is that these structures are 
PChar structures and should be returning an address of nil if they are 
empty.  Instead they come back with an address of 0xh20000000  which of 
course is an invalid address.  This address is being passed back to the 
calling program by Aspell-15.dll in by function        
'aspell_config_retrieve' which appears (from the delphi example that I 
have) to be of the format:
function(ths:AspellConfig; key:PChar):PChar; cdecl;
AspellConfig is defined withing delphi as:
 AspellKeyInfo = ^TAspellKeyInfo;
 TAspellKeyInfo = record
 {* the name of the key *}
   name       : PChar;
 {* the key type *}
   type_      : AspellKeyInfoType;
 {* the default value of the key *}
   def        : PChar;
 {* a brief description of the key or null if internal value *}
   desc       : PChar;
 {* other data used by config implementations
  * should be set to 0 if not used *}
   otherdata  : array[0..15] of char;
 end;


Apparently the Def and Desc do not have nil addresses in them instead 
refer to an invalid address.

Is there something wrong with my data definition or are Def and Desc 
fields of the wrong type?

Thanks for your comments.

Jon Grewer