14. The data input system of claim 11 wherein the similarity metric is a minimum number of single character edits to change one text item into another, interpolated with a uniform distribution over all text items in a fixed vocabulary with the same spoken text representation as the respective true word, where the spoken text representation represents spoken text items by sound as pronounced in a spoken language so that text items which sound the same when spoken in the language have a similar representation.
11. The data input system of claim 1 comprising an alternative candidate generator implemented using the processor, the alternative candidate generator configured to compute alternative candidates by computing a similarity metric between a respective true word and items in a collection of items.