# The &kspell; Handbook

David
Sweet

    dsweet@chaos.umd.edu

2002-02-24
1.00.00

&kspell; is the spelling checker used by KDE applications such as &kate;, &kmail;, and &kword;. It is a GUI frontend to International ISpell and ASpell.

spell
spelling
kspell
ispell
aspell
check
checker
KDE

## Misspelled Word Dialog

(If you do not have Ispell installed you can obtain it from the International ISpell home page. ASpell is available from the ASpell home page.)

### General Use

The top line in the dialog displays a possibly misspelled word which was found in your document. &kspell; attempts to find an appropriate replacement word. One or several may be found. The best guess is shown to the right of Replacement:. To accept this replacement, click on Replace. You may also select a word from the list of Suggestions and then click Replace to replace the misspelled word with the selected word.

To keep your original spelling, click on Ignore.

To stop the spell checking -- keeping the changes you've already made -- click on Stop.

To stop the spell checking and cancel the changes you've already made, click on Cancel.

Clicking on Replace All will initially perform the same function as clicking on Replace, but will automatically replace the misspelled word with the chosen replacement word, if it appears again (at a later point) in your document.

The Ignore All button ignores this and all future occurrences of the misspelled word.

Clicking on Add will add the misspelled word to your personal dictionary (this is distinct from the original system dictionary, so the additions you make will not be seen by other users).

## Configuration Dialog

### Dictionaries

You can choose the dictionary to use for spell checking from the list of installed dictionaries.

### Encodings

The most commonly used character encodings are:

US-ASCII

  This is the character set used for English text.

ISO-8859-1

  This is used for Western European languages.

UTF-8

  This is a Unicode encoding that can be used for almost any language, if your system has the necessary fonts.

You should select the one that matches the character set you are using. In some cases, dictionaries will support more than one encoding. A dictionary might, for example, accept accented characters when ISO-8859-1 is selected, but accept email-style character combinations (like `'a` for an accented `a`) when US-ASCII is selected. Please see your dictionary's distribution for more information.

### Spell-checking client

You may choose to use Ispell or Aspell as the spell-checking backend for &kspell;. Ispell is more widely available and may have better international support, but Aspell is gaining popularity as it claims to give better suggestions for word replacements.

### Other

It is recommend that you do not change the first two options unless you have read the International ISpell man page.

## Contact Information

For more information about &kspell;, visit the &kspell; Home Page. In particular, you will find information about programming the &kspell; C++ class.

You may email the author/maintainer with questions and/or comments at dsweet@kde.org.

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