Next: 3. Basic Usage Up: Aspell .33 alpha A Previous: 1. Introduction Contents
Subsections

- 2.1 Requirements
- 2.2 Obtaining
- 2.3 Support
- 2.4 Helping Out
- 2.5 Compiling & Installing
  - 2.5.1 Generic Install Instructions
  - 2.5.2 General Problems
  - 2.5.3 Win32 Notes
  - 2.5.4 Compiling with Egcs and Gcc 2.8
  - 2.5.5 Upgrading from version .32.6
  - 2.5.6 Upgrading from version .32.1
  - 2.5.7 Upgrading from version .31.1
  - 2.5.8 Upgrading from version .30
  - 2.5.9 Upgrading from version .29.1
  - 2.5.10 Upgrading from version .29
  - 2.5.11 Upgrading from version .28.3
  - 2.5.12 Upgrading from version .28.2.1
  - 2.5.13 Upgrading from version .27.2
  - 2.5.14 Upgrading from version .25
  - 2.5.15 Upgrading from version .24

# 2. Getting Started

# 2.1 Requirements

Aspell requires egcs 1.1, or gcc 2.95 (or better), as the C++ compiler. Other standard complaint C++ might work however it will take some work as gcc is not fully complaint yet; at very least you will need to install Sgi's STL or STLPort. Unless you are using version 3.11 of SGI's STL you will need to apply a patch to fix a bug in the rope container. (See section 2.5.4 for what to do) That latest version of SGI's STL (`http://www.sgi.com/Technology/STL/`), version 3.11, fixes the bugs in rope and thus does not need to be fixed. All versions of egcs and any version of gcc before 2.95 will need this patch applied. Gcc 2.95 and latter uses version 3.11 (or better) and thus does not need the patch applied.

Aspell also requires the Portable Spell Checker Interface Library, otherwise known as Pspell, to be installed on your system before it will compile. Aspell requires version .11 or better. You can obtain the latest version of Pspell from `http://pspell.sourceforge.net/`

# 2.2 Obtaining

The latest version can always be found at Aspell's home page at `http://aspell.sourceforge.net`.

# 2.3 Support

Support for Aspell can be found on the Aspell mailing list. Instructions for joining the mailing list (and an archive of the mailing list) can be found off the Aspell home page at `http://aspell.sourceforge.net`.

# 2.4 Helping Out

The easiest thing you can do to help out it is too send me your .aspell.«lang».prepl file located in your home directory every so often. (Email kevina at users sourceforge net) The file contains data on which word pairs aspell is unable to come up with the proper suggestion. If the file does not exist is simply means that you were only using aspell in a program such as emacs which does not communicate the replacement pairs back to aspell. Sending me the file would help me improve aspell accuracy as right now I don't have very much real data to work with.

Another thing you can do to help out is to try Aspell out on a different language as the Language support system is not very well tested.

# 2.5 Compiling & Installing

## 2.5.1 Generic Install Instructions

Before aspell is compiled Pspell must be installed. You can obtain the latest version of Pspell from `http://pspell.sourceforge.net/`.

Once Pspell is installed and you have read the sections below to take care of any special requirements for you system simply type

> ./configure && make

or

> ./configure --disable-static && make

to avoid making the static libraries on a system that supports shared libraries. For additional configure options type ./configure --help.

Aspell should then compile with out any additional user intervention. If you run into problems please first check the sections below as that might solve your problem. If it doesn't please send me a note at kevina at users sourceforge net with the compiler, system you are using and any error messages that were produced.

To install the program simply type

> make install

And that's all there is too it for a basic instualltion.

If you do not have Ispell or the traditional unix ``spell'' utility installed on your system than you should also copy the compatibly scripts ``ispell'' and ``spell'' located in the scripts/ directory into your binary directory which is usually /usr/local/bin so that programs that expect ispell or spell command will work correctly.

## 2.5.2 General Problems

If aspell core dumps when spell checking files but seams OK otherwise please see section 2.5.4 as there is a good change that that will fix your problem.

If you get an unresolved symbol to ``rope<char, allocator<char> >::_S_min_len'' or anything with rope somewhere in the name (it might be mangled) try changing the line

  `//template crope;`

to

  `template crope;`

in aspell.cc located in the src/ directory.

## 2.5.3 Win32 Notes

Aspell is now able to compile on Win32 platforms using the Win32 version of gcc. Aspell .30.1 can either be compiled with Cgiwin or Mingw version of gcc 2.95 using Cgiwin development environment. Unfortunately the latest version of Aspell will not compile with Mingw. I was hoping to have this fixed by in this version of Aspell (.33) but I ran out of time. Getting Aspell to work under Mingw is one of the goals for the Aspell .33.1.

The default paths for Aspell are designed for a Unix system and not a Win32 system so you might want to specify different ones when compiling Aspell. Also if the HOME environmental variable is not set aspell will assume it is the current working directly. This may lead to your personal word lists being saved in unpredictable locations. To solve this specify the complete path of the personal and replacement word lists in aspell.conf. For example the Win32 binary version of Aspell .30 had the following aspell.conf:

  `personal /aspell/dict/english.pws
  repl /aspell/dict/english.prepl`

##
2.5.4 Compiling with Egcs and Gcc 2.8

In order for aspell to function properly under egcs or gcc 2.8.* you will need to apply the patch file stl_rope-30.diff. (Gcc 2.95 uses version 3.11 of SGI's STL and thus does not need this patch applied.) To apply the patch cd over to the g++ include directory (normally a subdirectory in the normal include directory) and type in the command

> patch < «path»/misc/stl_rope-30.diff

(where path is the full patch to the location where aspell was unpacked) to patch the necessary file. If it is impossible for you to do this copy the file stl_rope.h to the the directory src/ in the aspell distribution and then type the command:

> patch < ../misc/stl_rope-30.diff

Then proceed as normal.

If you do not apply this command aspell will crash when used interactively to spell check files. ``aspell -a'' and all other aspell modes will work fine however.

## 2.5.5 Upgrading from version .32.6

I have expanded the medium (*-med) word lists and decided to eliminate the large word lists (*-lrg) for now. However, the installing process will not automatically remove the large word lists so if you don't want them hanging around you should delete them your self. To remove all the files remove the following files from «library dir»/aspell:

> american-lrg-only british-lrg-only canadian-lrg-only english-lrg-only american-lrg.multi british-lrg.multi canadian-lrg.multi

and the following files from «share dir»/pspell:

> en-american-lrg-aspell.pwli en-canadian-lrg-aspell.pwli en-british-lrg-aspell.pwli

## 2.5.6 Upgrading from version .32.1

Even though .32.5 is a minor release it breaks binary compatibly which means applications such as Gaspell will need to be recompiled.

## 2.5.7 Upgrading from version .31.1

The format and name of the main dictionary has changed yet again. The install process will over write the old version, so unless you are using dictionaries other than the one provided with aspell or want to have multiple versions of aspell installed you should not have to worry about this.

The apostrophe (') is no longer considered part of the word if it appears at the end of a word. This means that you may have to manually remove words from your personal word list if you get a message similar to:

> Invalid word "dogs'": The character ''' may not appear at the end of a word.

To remove the word simply delete the line containing the word form the personal word list ( normally called ``.aspell.english.pws'' ).

Aspell now uses a completely new word list. This means that same words that were in the original word list may no longer appear in the current one. You may now also chose from American, British, and Canadian spelling and from two sizes medium and large. See section 5.4.1 for more information on choosing among the different choices. The original source that the word lists were created from is now found under the scowl/ directory.

## 2.5.8 Upgrading from version .30

The format of the main dictionary file has changed a bit. If you were able to use Aspell .30 then the old format should work. The only time the old format will NOT work is in the rare case the mmap fails. Previous version of aspell will just abort with an error when the mmap fails but the new version will attempt to read in the file using fread. Fread will fail with the old version of the main word list.

## 2.5.9 Upgrading from version .29.1

The format (but not the name) of the main dictionary has changed yet again. The install process will over write the old version, so unless you are using dictionaries other than the one provided with aspell or want to have multiple versions of aspell installed you should not have to worry about this.

Aspell also now depends on Portable Spell Checker Interface Library otherwise known as Pspell. Pspell must be installed before aspell will compile, you can find it at `http://pspell.sourceforge.net/`.

## 2.5.10 Upgrading from version .29

The format and name of the main dictionary has changed which means it will need to be recompiled. The install process will remove the old files for you, so unless you are using dictionaries other than the one provided with aspell or want to have multiple versions of aspell installed you should not have to worry about this.

## 2.5.11 Upgrading from version .28.3

Aspell now uses namespaces which means egcs 1.0 and gcc 2.8 will no longer cut it. If this becomes a serious problem let me know as it should not be to difficult to get it working again with egcs 1.0 and gcc 2.8.

Due to the new soundslike code the the main dictionary will need to be recompiled. The build process does this automatically so unless you want to have more than one version of aspell around you should not need to worry about this.

The format and file name of the personal dictionaries has also changed. In most cases aspell will automatically detect this and convert it for you by using the following algorithm.

1. If no file exist of *.pws (for the personal word list) or *.prepl (for the personal replacement list) aspell will look for *.per or *.rpl respectfully. If that file is found it will read in the data using the old format.
2. When saving the dictionary it will save is as *.pws or *.prepl respectfully.
3. Once saved as the new format it will delete the old file.

If you have an older version of aspell around you can restore the old dictionaries by using these command

> aspell.new dump personal | aspell.old create personal

> aspell.new dump repl | aspell.old create repl

The new version of aspell will then leave the old files alone as long as *.pws and *.prepl exist.

Also, if the file does not end in .pws or .prepl it will try to read it in using the new format and if that fails it will read in the old format. When the file is saved it will be saved as the new format.

I am hopping I will not have to change the format of the personal dictionaries again. However, the main word list however is very likely to change in format.

## 2.5.12 Upgrading from version .28.2.1

The behavior of ``aspell check'' changed so that it will now over right the original file as creating new file was creating too many problems when used with programs like pine and vi.

## 2.5.13 Upgrading from version .27.2

The name of the personal word lists have changes from .aspell.per and .aspell.rpl to .aspell.«lang».per and .aspell.«lang».rpl respectively. «lang» is is the language name which will generally be ``english''. If you wish to use your old word lists you will need to rename those files.

## 2.5.14 Upgrading from version .25

The format of the personal replacement dictionary has changed. So, you will either need to rename or remove the file .aspell.rpl located in your home directory. If you have information in this file you would like to preserve please send me an email.

## 2.5.15 Upgrading from version .24

Because the location of the main word list moved you should probably do a make uninstall (with the old version of a Aspell) before upgrading to remove the old word lists. A make uninstall will not remove any personal word lists.

Next: 3. Basic Usage Up: Aspell .33 alpha A Previous: 1. Introduction Contents