At 10:39 7/20/95, Timothy C. May wrote:

To state an obvious non-crypto use of such "modules," why do all major word processing and page layout apps have their own "dictionaries"? Why do I have to train the dictionaries of Word, Nisus, FrameMaker, MORE, etc.? That there have not been "dictionary modules," for many and sundry reasons, is telling. (Before anyone mentions it, one can on the Mac use things like "Thunder" instead of the local dictionaries...this is not the same as a module usable by all programs, but instead is a user choice to bypass the local dictionaries. We could quibble for hours about whether this is in fact a universal module or not.

Since the support that Thunder 7 provides (with Wordprocessing and Wordprocessing-Like Programs that it supports) is indistinguishable from that provided by each program's integrated SpellChecker (along with T7 providing a common set of "extra" User-Extendable Dictionaries as well as a Glossary/Mis-Spelling/Words-to-Replace Dictionary [ie: Pre-Prime the list of incorrectly spelled words for "Replace All" so the user's personal misspellings are automatically corrected without any interaction on his/her part]), I think the ball is initially in the court of those who claim it is not a universal module (admittedly only for those WPs it supports) to explain why is does not function as one would function if it existed. IMHO - T7 is walking and quacking like a Duck so I think calling it a "Duck" (as a first approximation) is not an unjustified action <g>.