PEEK(100): Sardine ROM Reviewed by J.D. Hildebrand, editor, LAPTOP USER magazine. Reproduced by permission; all rights reserved. Traveling Software, the Bothell, Washington company whose T-Word is the word processor to beat in the Model 100 market, recently released an enhancement to its text-editing library. The enhancement is Sardine, a spelling checker. As unlikely as it is to expect a 32K, 80C85-based laptop with a tiny screen to run a memory-intensive spelling checker, Traveling Software has pulled it off. The program works -- and in conjunction with T-Word, represents the most advanced word processing system available for the Model 100, Tandy 102 and Tandy 200. I've spent a couple of weeks getting familiar with the ROM version of Sardine. The program is also available on 3.5-inch diskettes that are compatible with the 100K Tandy Portable Disk Drive or the 200K Portable Disk Drive 2. The disk version, which includes a 33,000-word dictionary vs. the ROM version's 7,000 word mini-dictionary, is greatly enhanced when used with Traveling Software's Ultimate ROM II. Because the ROM version occupies the computer's sole expansion ROM socket, however, it cannot be used with Ultimate ROM II. PREJUDICES UP FRONT First an admission: I'm not a big fan of spelling checkers. I write for a living, and I benefit if the text I compose or edit contains no spelling or typographical errors. I'm a great prospect for spelling checkers. But I don't use one on my PC and I probably won't continue to use the ROM version of Sardine, delightful and effective though it is. The reason? Sardine will let you get away with a sentence like "Hi past they're bawl two are teem" when what you meant to say was "He passed their ball to our team." Seven words in the sentence, all seven spelled incorrectly, and never a peep from Sardine. This isn't a criticism of Sardine alone, but of spelling checkers as a class. They lack the intelligence to judge the accuracy of words in context. Errors like those in the previous paragraph must be discovered and corrected manually. So what, you ask? So plenty. The problem is that once a writer has passed his work through a spelling checker, the pressure is off. The computer has already checked the document for errors, so the final printout sometimes doesn't get the thorough proofreading it needs. If it does get a thorough proofreading, then the spelling checker hasn't saved the author much work. If it doesn't, then there is a pretty strong likelihood that the finished document will contain more errors than it would if it were checked manually by a competent speller. It's ironic. Although I have a higher need than most people for accurate spelling, I'm better off without a spelling checker. If I were a terrible typist, prone to typographical errors every three or four words, maybe I would feel differently. As it is, I worry that it creates more problems than it solves. That said, it should also be noted that the Sardine ROM is an impressively capable program that competes favorably with RAM-hungry programs that run on desktop PCs. It has all the functions you'd expect from a full-featured spelling checker and it operates so quickly that you won't fail to run it for lack of time. This is an important point: Some desktop spelling checkers are simply too much trouble to load and run, with the result that they languish unused in the diskette box. INSTALLATION Sardine plugs into the auxiliary ROM socket located under the hatch on the bottom of the Model 100, Tandy 102 or Tandy 200. (It should be noted that Sardine, like all Traveling Software products, is also available for the NEC PC-8201.) Like all Traveling Software ROMs, Sardine comes wrapped in a cross-connect sleeve from Polar Engineering and Consulting and mounted on a keyed plastic carrier that prevents improper installation. It is literally impossible to plug the chip in incorrectly without breaking it in three places. So the ROM gets high marks for ease of installation. Traveling Software recommends that you back up your memory contents before installing the Sardine ROM, but this safeguard isn't necessary. However, it is important to remove machine-language programs from high memory before using the chip for the first time. Otherwise Sardine and the .CO program will fight over memory space and you will be the loser. You'll have to cold-start the computer and blast your laptop's memory contents to bit heaven. Once the chip is installed, you simply turn the computer on, enter BASIC and CALL a memory address to initialize the program. On the Model 100 and Tandy 102, for example, you type CALL 63013,1. This process, with small variations, is the same required for all ROM-based programs for laptops. So once again Sardine gets good marks. OPERATION It's at this point that you learn something interesting about Sardine. The copyright screen that appears doesn't say ``Sardine,'' but ``T-Word with Sardine.'' You get more than you bargained for: not just a spelling checker, but Traveling Software's popular and sophisticated word processor as well. It's thrown in as a bonus, and it's worth Sardine's price even if you never use the spell-check functions. When you exit from the program, you'll find T-WORD+, CONFIG.DO and WORDS.DO added to your laptop's main menu -- but no mention of Sardine. The spelling checker is part of the word processor. A full discussion of T-Word's features is beyond the scope of this article, but it's worth noting that it offers such functions as variable margins and page length, line justification, line spacing, alternate typefaces, automatic page numbering, conditional paging, search and replace, an overwrite mode, word-counting, a graphic page-plot, mail-merge capabilities ... the list goes on and on. T-Word enjoys a fanatical user base and deserves its good reputation. Sardine makes T-Word even better. To check a document file, simply press Grph-F while you're within TEXT or T-Word. The computer responds with a prompt: Use [R]OM or [D]isk. Since I used only the ROM version, without the auxiliary disk, I answered with an R. However, since the dictionary disk comes with the ROM software, you could choose either. The program sorts the words in the file, then checks them alphabetically. Messages appear on the screen periodically to keep the user apprised of the program's progress: Checking A's, Checking B's and so on. Sardine also checks each word against a RAM-based auxiliary dictionary called WORDS.DO. It's a good idea to add your name and other frequently typed but uncommon words to this file; otherwise they will always be flagged as incorrectly spelled. This procedure is common to all of the better spelling checkers on the market, though some early programs didn't allow the user to add words to the dictionary. The ability to create a custom dictionary of words you frequently use is a key selection criterion for any spelling checker. Its presence bodes well for Sardine. When the program has finished checking the words, it reports the total number of words in the file as well as the number of misspelled words. In an apparent move to give the user the benefit of the doubt, Sardine doesn't call misspelled words misspelled words. Instead, it refers to them as ``not found'' in the dictionary. This is actually more accurate; many correctly spelled words do not exist in the Sardine dictionary, and so are flagged as possibly misspelled. Also appearing on the screen is a line of dots. This represents the misspelled words in your file (or at least, the manual reports, the first 100 of them) -- one dot for each word. This helps you anticipate how long it will take to make the necessary corrections in your document. FUNCTION KEYS At this point you control Sardine through the computer's function keys. F1, defined on the status line of the 100's LCD as Ok, lets you accept the displayed word as correct and move on to the next one. F2, Cntxt, lets you view the text that surrounds the flagged word. If the misspelled word is ``hir,'' for example, you would probably need to review it in context to determine whether it should be changed to ``hire,'' ``her,'' ``here'' or some other word. F3, Dict, lets you consult the dictionary to find a correct spelling for the flagged word. Unlike programs for desktop PCs, however, which can provide a list of alternative possible spellings based on the misspelled word, Sardine requires that you provide a search string. The possible alternatives Sardine locates will all begin with the string you specify. This is one of the few important areas in which Sardine does not work as easily or as efficiently as desktop spelling checkers. A trip to the dictionary may return more words than the 100 can display on the screen at once. F1 provides the next screenload of words. To select a word from the list provided by Sardine, simply move the cursor to it and press Enter. At this point Sardine requires that you specify whether you want to correct the word in all occurrences, to correct conditionally, with a ``replace?'' prompt at each occurrence, or whether you want to quit without making any changes. F4 and F5, Prev and Next, let you review flagged words without changing them. F5 is similar to F1, but it doesn't unflag the word. So if you decide later that you want to correct the word after all, you can press F4 to return to it. F6, which carries a Lern label on the status line, lets you add the misspelled word to your auxiliary dictionary, the WORDS.DO file that's maintained in RAM. You can also add words to WORDS.DO manually. F7, Spel, lets you correct the word without consulting the dictionary. You simply type the word as it should have been spelled. And F8, Text, returns you to the document you are editing. It's important to note that in addition to misspelled words, Sardine identifies repeated words within a document. This advanced feature is not offered on many desktop spelling checkers. WORD BY WORD It's also possible to check individual words as you type or edit a file without checking the rest of the document. While Grph-F checks an entire file, Grph-W checks single words. The only thing you have to remember is that you must place the cursor over the last letter in the word to be checked (or over the space immediately after it). The program evidently defines a word as all the text between the cursor and the first space (ASCII 32) to the left of the cursor. This knowledge is handy; it means that if you want to check just the root of a word, without any suffixes, you can place the cursor somewhere within the word. The program only checks the text to the left of the cursor. Like the F3 option under file-checking, Grph-W responds with a list of words from the ROM or disk dictionary. You can leave the word as it is or correct it. If no word is found that contains the misspelled word, you simply return to the editor, move the cursor the left a space or two, and try again. Sardine has some limitations: It checks words that end in 's only as far as the apostrophe. So misspelling's like does's can slip through. Other contractions, however, like don't and can't, are checked in their entirety. Also, Sardine ordinarily maintains just one auxiliary dictionary, which must be named WORDS.DO. If this file becomes very long it may not fit into RAM, or it may increase the time it takes to check a file or word to an unacceptable length. You can solve this problem by creating job-specific WORDS.DO files and storing them under different names. Just rename them to WORDS.DO when you want to use them. EFFECTIVENESS Sardine's ROM dictionary contains just 7,000 words. You might expect that it would therefore identify far too many words as possibly misspelled in most documents. However, this is not the case. The 7,000-word dictionary was developed at Wang Laboratories in a two-year analysis of business writing, and it contains most of the words you're likely to use in everyday correspondence. Once you add proper names to WORDS.DO, you'll find few incorrectly flagged words. Every Sardine ROM also comes with the 33,000-word Random House American Dictionary on a TDD or TDD-2 disk. While this disk lengthens the word-review time, it further reduces the number of inappropriately flagged words. This increases Sardine's value for disk users. Should you buy the Sardine ROM? It depends. If you already use a word processing program, its only value is as a spelling checker. My own opinion is that spelling checkers as a class aren't that valuable, but if you want one, this is the one to buy. If you already use a ROM-based program such as Ultimate ROM II or Super ROM, then you can't use the Sardine ROM without extraordinary measures -- swapping ROMs every time you want to check a document or purchasing a 6 ROM Bank or PG Designs Vault. If you fall into this class, you should check out the disk-based version of Sardine. But if you're a Tandy disk drive user searching for the ideal word processing system, Sardine is it. You get a fast, powerful spelling checker PLUS T-Word -- the most potent word processing combination yet developed for the Model 100 family. The Sardine ROM retails for $169.95, including the disk dictionary, ROM chip, Sardine manual, T-Word manual and a copy of the Random House American Dictionary pocket version. It requires at least 16K of RAM. Contact Traveling Software, 19310 North Creek Parkway, Bothell, WA 98011, (800) 343-8080, or (206) 483-8088 in Washington.