Re: [Aspell-user] Can I get "edit distance" for the suggestions?

[Kevin Atkinson]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Ethan Bradford wrote:

> Here's a proposal for the API:
>  We add the type AspellIntEnumeration (or maybe a better name -- lower-case
> L next to cap I is ugly, but it would be nice if it was like
> AspellStringEnumeration).
>  We add a call to extract that from an AspellWordList:
>     AspellIntEnumeration * scores = aspell_word_list_scores(suggestions);

I was more thinking of using a struct something like
  struct Suggestion {
     const char * word;
     int word_len;
     int score;
  }
  and new methods to go along with it....

> Behind the scenes,  we add to AspellWordList a list of scores.  The list of
> scores is set in Working::transfer when the list of words is created.
>
> On 4/2/06, Kevin Atkinson <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On Fri, 31 Mar 2006, Ethan Bradford wrote:
> >
> > > I'm mystified as to how the definition of *AspellStringEnumeration* is
> > > hidden from us, so I can't peek inside of that.  It seems obvious from
> > the
> > > outside that edit distance (i.e. the # of changes necessary to get from
> > the
> > > checked word to a proposed suggestion) is used to sort the results
> > presented
> > > to the user.  I'd like to use outside information to sort the results
> > with
> > > equal edit distance w.r.t. eachother.  So how do I get the edit
> > distance?
> >
> > The "edit-distance" is not stored in AspellStringEnumeration.  It is only
> > stored internally inside data structures in suggest.cpp.  Also its not a
> > simple edit-distance function that is used to rank the suggestions, but a
> > combination of several factors, most of them being closely related to an
> > edit-distance.  In the future other factors, such as frequency, may be
> > used to rank the suggestions.  The more correct term to use is "score".
> >
> > As far as making the score available outside of suggest.cpp, I am not
> > against it.  I just haven't gotten around to it.  I will gladly accept a
> > patch to this effect, however I will be fairly picky about how it is done.
> > For example I won't accept something that hacks AspellStringEnumeration to
> > include the score.  A separate data structure should be used.  Also,
> > backwards compatibility will need to be maintained.