Welcome to mSpelling’s documentation!

mSpelling

Measure of spelling skills in Spanish

• GitHub repo: https://github.com/mario-bermonti/mspelling.git

• Documentation: https://mspelling.readthedocs.io/

• Free software: GNU General Public License v3

Features

• Developed specifically for research on spelling skills

• Easy to administer

• Flexible and easy to extend

• Available for MacOS

• Results are saved to a sqlite database

Description

Words are presented by the computer one at a time and the participant types the word using the keyboard. Participants have a rest period after every 5 trials.

mSpelling saves the results to a sqlite database at the end of the session.

mSpelling is developed using the Google’s Flutter Framework and has been used in the DeMo and TEST studies (more info).

Getting Started

Please see mSpelling documentation for details about how to install and use mSpelling.

Contributing to this project

All contributions are welcome!

We will add instructions for contributing soon.

This is a beginner-friendly project so don’t hesitate to ask any questions or get in touch with the project’s maintainers.

Please review the project’s code of conduct before making any contributions.

Author

This project was developed by Mario E. Bermonti-Pérez as part of his academic research. Feel free to contact me at mbermonti@psm.edu or

mbermonti1132@gmail.com.

Citation

If you use mSpelling in your research, please cite as Bermonti-Pérez, M. (2022). mario-bermonti/mspelling: V0.4.0. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6468561

Installation

The current method of installion requires downloading mSpelling and allowing your computer to open it (MacOS).

To install mspelling:

1. Download the most recent version of mspelling from the release page

2. Open the app by double clicking on it

You will probably receive a message that the app cannot be verified and that you should not open it. That is OK, is just Apple being very cautious.

To enable the app:

1. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Security

2. Press Open Anyway

3. That is it! You can now open the app again.

Usage

Using mSpelling

mSpelling presents any auditory stimuli you want and saves the participant’s response. To use mSpelling you must specify a folder where to read the stimuli from and where to save the data collected. We call this folder a workspace.

Workspace

A workspace is just a folder that contains a folder named stim. mSpelling reads the stimuli to be presented from the stim folder. Inside the stim folder, you specify the stim in a simple text (extension .txt) file called stim

mSpelling reads the stimuli to be presented from a folder inside the workspace that must be named stim (e.g., workspace/stim). The stim folder must contain 2 things:

1. a text file (extension .txt) called stim, where each line contains a single word to be presented to the participant

2. the audio files (extension .wav) that contain the audio to present for each word. The name of these files must be the word itself (i.e., if the stimulus is the word dog, the audio file must be named dog)

Warning

mSpelling will not work if the word and audio stimuli are not in the folder it expects.

You can download a demo workspace to try mSpelling out! Don’t forget to extract the contents of the workspace by openning it.

Data

The data will be saved to a file called mspelling_data.sqlite inside the workspace. This file will contain the data for all participants.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Unreleased

[0.4.0] - 2023-06-25

• Complete rewrite of mspelling to Google’s Flutter framework (dart language)

• Simplified process of installation and running

0.3.0 - 2022-04-18

Adds new functionality to mspelling and update dependencies.

0.2.2 - 2022-01-07

[0.2.0] - 2021-12-19

Added

• First release.

BSD 3-clause

Copyright (c) 2021, Mario E. Bermonti Pérez All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

• Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.