Version 4.1

 

   MapSpeller™ Locationaries™  (U.S. Patent No. 7,681,126)
The term Locationary™ is trademarked; Locationaries are copyrighted, and their use is patented. The term itself is made up from "location" and "dictionary".

What are Locationaries?

Locationaries are spatial dictionaries. They keep track of correctly spelled words along with the location in the world where those words are accurately spelled.

MapSpeller spell checks both conventionally and spatially.

Conventional dictionaries, which are lists of words that are deemed correctly spelled, don't offer the ability to take the geographic/coordinate location of words in maps into consideration when proofing them; Locationaries do. Locationaries are "maps" of correctly spelled words, maps of dictionary words.

Locationaries and Data Frame Objects

Spatial spell-checking is the ability to proof a word while taking the geographic/coordinate location of such word into consideration. The primary purpose of Locationaries is to enable spatial spell checking of location-bound words within a data frame. Map annotations and geodatabase contain such words.

Radius spell-checking is the process of proofing words by specifying that words will be considered correctly spelled if they are located within a certain distance (the radius) of a Locationary feature. Radius spell-checking can also be used to detect:

  1. Geographic names that are farther from the feature they represent than an acceptable distance (the radius).
  2. Features whose "labels" have been switched.

Locationaries and Layout Page Objects

Locationaries can also be used to indirectly proof non-location-based text residing on the layout page. Locationary words used to check data frames can be temporarily exported into a conventional dictionary and then re-used to proof words from the layout page. This is particularly useful in proofing layout text that contains the names of localities being mapped, such as in layout titles.

Locationary Format

In technical ArcGIS terms, a Locationary can be thought of as a new type of feature class, a feature class of dictionary/Locationary features.  Each Locationary feature consists of a record in the feature class attribute table that stores or tracks a correct spelling (the Locationary word) as well as a corresponding polygon (or multi-part polygon) that represents the minimum geographic area of validity of the Locationary word (or combination of words). 

Locationaries are however different from standard GIS feature classes by, for example, the meaning of a feature, the fact that features don't have to represent real-word objects; the fact that they are not built thematically (roads versus towns).

Locationaries can be made language dependent or not by end users.

At MapSpeller 4.1, Locationaries are currently implemented as theme-independent polygon shapefiles. They are theme-independent in the sense that, unlike conventional feature classes, they can contain all sorts of polygon features, including parcels, buffered roads, buffered name places, etc. The only common characteristics between those features is that they all have to:

  1. Be polygonal. The polygon geometry represents the minimum geographic extent where the spelling is valid.
  2. Have a text field called "NAME" containing the dictionary word or word combination.
  3. Be in the same defined coordinate system.

Locationary Types and Availability

They are two types of Locationaries: personal and shared.  Those types of Locationaries are analogous to personal and enterprise dictionaries.

  • Personal Locationary

The personal Locationary belongs to the logged-in individual user and is where only he/she can save Locationary features that he/she deems correctly spelled and located. Doing so prevents such spelling from reappearing over and over in the MapSpeller Potential Error dialog at each encounter of the spelling within the valid location/extent. Features within the personal Locationary only influence its owner.

At Version 4.1, MapSpeller distributes a single, multilingual, editable, personal Locationary per user. Users can choose to set it to a coordinate system of their choice or to a default generic worldwide system when they start using MapSpeller. The coordinate system can thereafter be changed using standard ArcMap practices.

  • Shared/Enterprise Locationaries

Shared Locationaries are also called enterprise Locationaries. Their purpose is also to prevent that spellings deemed correctly spelled and located be considered errors. The bulk of Locationary features should reside inside enterprise Locationaries as opposed to personal Locationaries so they can be reviewed and stored once by the organization and shared multiple times among its members. Such Locationaries may include all the correctly spelled and located roads, name places, etc. within the enterprise area of interest, and therefore can be very large. They should be shared instead of duplicated.

As of this writing, Edgetech is not providing any enterprise Locationaries. However,

Adding or Removing Locationary Features

MapSpeller provides a couple of interfaces for adding or removing features from personal Locationaries.

Users can also take advantage of the fact that all Locationaries have the same format as polygonal feature classes and therefore can be edited using well-known ArcMap procedures.
 
 
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MapSpeller™ for ArcGIS®
Page last updated on October 07, 2017
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