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BDicty Reader
v5.4 and Beiks LexSpell for Palms OS
Reviewed
by: Howard
Carson, June 2004, send
e-mail
Published
by: Beiks
LLC, go
to the web site
Requires: Any
PDA running Palm OS 3.5 - 5.x with sufficient free memory
MSRP: $14.95
(LexSpell U.S. English)
If definitions
are to dictionaries as spelling is to comprehension, what
in the world do we do with a Palm OS Handheld filled with
thousands of notes, calendar entries, contacts, reviews,
web pages and you name it, many of which contain spelling
errors and some of which have to be beamed to others or
included in larger documents? To date, there isn't a single
handheld PDA bundled with either a dictionary or a spell
checker. Frustrating yes, but then what would Beiks do
if there wasn't this huge need for dictionaries and spelling
lexicons and translation databases? Several other companies
develop and market a variety of dictionaries, good and
bad, but Beiks is one of the few companies that has hammered
the market with so many robust, good quality products in
this segment.
As Handhelds
are used for more and more applications - at home, in the
office, on the road, in school, for e-mail, web browsing
- more and more of what we print or write on these devices
is bound to be distributed in the form of messages, notes
and documents. Spelling is important and all the dopey
instant messaging abbreviations have to be relegated to
the trash where they belong. Please.
The
BDicty Reader v5.4
We've
reviewed Beiks software before - the English
Dictionary and the MedicineNet Pocket
Drug Guide - but we've never actually focused on the
BDicty Reader itself. For the uninitiated, the BDicty Reader
is supplied free of charge with the majority of the 100
or so Beiks language products you can buy - with everything
except the free lexicons in fact. You can also buy the
reader as a standalone product and then use it with any
of nearly three dozen free lexicons (currently 32 actually,
covering everything from NASA acronyms, English and German
irregular verbs, to a glossary of theater terms, French
computer terms, name meanings, astronomy terms and you
name it).
This
latest version of the BDicty Reader is fully compatible
with
the virtual graffiti silkscreen supplied with the
Sony Clié TH55, 320x480 resolution and all the nifty
new features in Palm OS 5. What the BDicty Reader is not,
is a replacement for the Palm Reader, MobiReader, TiBR
Pro or any of the other book reader software out there.
BDicty
has
its own set of cool features however and it's fast.
Configuring
BDicty is simple. Once it's installed, tap Preferences
in the Options menu and select CmdBar (Command
Bar) so that you can call BDicty using the diagonal command
stroke in the graffiti area (the BDicty icon appears at
the end of the command bar). You can also choose to call
BDicty via two different hot key combinations. Other configuration
options include a setting which uses Sony high resolution
fonts installed on Cliés and vertical or horizontal
definition displays when using dictionary lexicons and
language databases.
The latest version seems to improve slightly on the already
terrific screen rendering. In fact, BDicty displays text
as cleanly and clearly as any program we've seen. It's
a tribute both to Beiks programmers and the vastly improved
Palm OS PDA screens. BDicty automatically detects the presence
in system memory or storage card of any installed Beiks
databases and lexicons, making them available in the reader
via drop list.
LexSpell
It's a spell checker designed to check the spelling in
any program in which text can be entered or edited as long
as the program doesn't cut itself off from the Palm operating
system. The LexSpell databases - there are currently 6
available for U.S. English, British English, German, Spanish,
French and Italian - are reasonably robust. The U.S. English
database contains almost 100,000 words. Beiks continues
to do a superb job of proofing of all its databases. After
reviewing three full Beiks products, we've yet to find
a spelling or grammatical error.
Configuring LexSpell is simple. The Spellcheck settings
provide three different access speeds, with selections
for fast (less accurate), medium (accurate) or slow (most
accurate) lookups, and a choice between phonetic and typographical
lookups. The accuracy setting is a bit of a misnomer in
that it really determines how many word selections appear
in the suggestion box. The faster the setting, the fewer
suggestions. The Resident Settings are simple - turn LexSpell
on or off. If it's on, using the diagonal command stroke
in the graffiti screen calls the command bar and you'll
see a small spell check icon which you can tap to call
LexSpell and check text in the current document page or
the current selection.
Cons: We have
no gripes with BDicty and only a couple of gripes with
LexSpell. As the LexSpell web site warns,
there are Palm OS programs which just don't let LexSpell
do its work. Those programs include the excellent Documents
To Go among others, which is really too bad considering
how widely DTG is used. A larger lookup database would
be nice because as soon as we started seriously flexing
the 'ol vocabulary we managed to stump the database with
words such as "frenate" (var: to furnish something
with a bridle), "metanoia" (a profound transformation)
and "muliebrity" (having womanly qualities).
Pros: On the
other hand, we found and corrected misspellings of obscurities
such as "jejunum" (a small part
of the intestine), googol (1 followed by 100 zeros - it's
a word which curiously stumped the excellent and much larger
BDicty English dictionary), "coprolite" (fossilized
dung - another word which stumped the BDicty English dictionary)
and "lacuna" (a missing part of a manuscript).
You really need to be a Lexicographer to understand why
some words are chosen for any particular database and others
are not. Nonetheless, there's no doubt that the common
English lexicon is thoroughly covered and it's very unlikely
you'll run across problems in day-to-day notes, memos,
journals and business documents. Nice online help system
- brief and to the point - with clear explanations of each
configuration setting. Perfect compatibility with all built-in
Palm OS programs and the customized versions supplied by
Sony with new Cliés and most of the agenda and time
management software we tried: DateBook, Memo, ToDo, Address,
Clié Organizer, DateBk5, Agendus, SuperNames and
so on. Accurate, sensible spelling correction suggestions
provided the word we were looking for at the top of the
suggestion box about 95% of the time with a minimum of
scrolling necessary to find the correct word when the first
suggestion was wrong. Get it right and spell it right.
BDicty and LexSpell make a nice pair. Recommended.
Letters to the Editor are welcome and occasionally abused in public. Send e-mail to: whine@kickstartnews.com
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