Re: Spell checking component for GNOME

["Michael D. Crawford" <crawford goingware com>]

> Is it possible to get the protocol definition?

Sure.  The developer page is at:

http://www.wordservices.org/Developers/index.html

probably the best place to start reading (a basic summary, meant to be
easy to understand) is the MacHack '94 paper:

http://www.wordservices.org/Developers/mhpaper.html

the protocols are based on OS-specific services that provide high-level
access to GUI content.  This makes the protocols pretty
platform-specific, and not interoperable between platforms as a
lower-level protocol like TCP is.  This isn't a problem in practice
because both the client and server need to present UI's on the same
machine, so it's OK they have to talk the same protocol.

The BeOS version of the protocol is actually a little better, in part
because I drew on my experience with the MacOS version after several
years in production, and got to make a fresh start.  The BeOS protocol
is described at:

http://www.wordservices.org/Developers/bespec.html

There's a link there where you can download the software development
kit.  The sources that are there will build with a little fiddling on
the current BeOS; they're out of date and I've been so busy I haven't
updated the binaries of the demo programs for eons.  But if you want to
try out the BeOS word services protocol, at the risk of some serious
flamage I'll tell you where you can download the free-as-in beer version
of the BeOS for Pentium:

http://free.be.com

The link that is there provides and installer that runs under windows. 
An installer that runs under Linux is provided by Be as well but I don't
know exactly where to find it.

Mike
crawford goingware com