This is aspell.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.6 from aspell.texi.

This is the user's manual for Aspell

   Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Kevin Atkinson.

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
     document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
     Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
     Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and
     no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the
     section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
   
INFO-DIR-SECTION GNU Packages
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* Aspell: (aspell).        GNU Aspell spelling checker
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY


File: aspell.info,  Node: Top,  Next: Introduction,  Up: (dir)

GNU Aspell
**********

GNU Aspell is a spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell.
It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker.

* Menu:

* Introduction::
* Support::
* Basic Usage::
* Customizing Aspell::
* Working With Dictionaries::
* Writing programs to use Aspell::
* Adding Support For Other Languages::
* Implementation Notes::
* Languages Which Aspell can Support::
* Language Related Issues::
* To Do::
* Installing::
* ChangeLog::
* Authors::
* Copying::

 --- The Detailed Node Listing ---

Basic Usage

* Spellchecking Individual Files::
* Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell::
* Using Aspell with other Applications::

Customizing Aspell

* Specifying Options::
* The Options::
* Dumping Configuration Values::
* Notes on Various Options::

Notes on Various Options

* Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes::
* Notes on the Prefix Option::
* Notes on Typo-Analysis::
* Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes::

Working With Dictionaries

* Using aspell-import::
* How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary::
* Listing Available Dictionaries::
* Dumping the Contents of the Word List::
* Creating an Individual Word List::
* Working With Affix Info in Word Lists::
* Using Multi Dictionaries::
* Dictionary Naming::
* AWLI files::

Writing programs to use Aspell

* Through the C API::
* Through A Pipe::
* Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs::

Adding Support For Other Languages

* The Language Data File::
* Compiling the Word List::
* Phonetic Code::
* The Simple Soundslike::
* Replacement Tables::
* Affix Compression::
* Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words::
* Creating A New Character Set::
* Format of the Character Set Data File::
* Creating An Official Dictionary Package::

Implementation Notes

* Aspell Suggestion Strategy::
* Notes on 8-bit Characters::

Languages Which Aspell can Support

* Supported::
* Unsupported::
* Multiple Scripts::
* Planned Dictionaries::
* References::

Language Related Issues

* Compound Words::
* Words With Symbols in Them::
* Unicode Normalization::
* German Sharp S::
* Context Sensitive Spelling::

To Do

* Important Items::
* Other Items::
* Notes on Various Items::

Notes on Various Items

* Word skipping by context::
* Hidden Markov Model::
* Email the Personal Dictionary::

Copying

* GNU Free Documentation License::
* GNU Lesser General Public License::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Introduction,  Next: Support,  Prev: Top,  Up: Top

Introduction
************

GNU Aspell is a spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell.  It
can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker.  Its
main feature is that it does a much better job of suggesting possible
replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell
checker out there for the English language.  Unlike Ispell, Aspell can
also easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special
dictionary.  Aspell will also do its best to respect the current locale
setting.  Other advantages over Ispell include support for using
multiple dictionaries at once and intelligently handling personal
dictionaries when more than one Aspell process is open at once.

   The latest version of Aspell can always be found at
`http://aspell.net'

Comparison to other spell checker engines
=========================================

                         Aspell   Ispell   Netscape   Microsoft
                                           4.0        Word 97
Open Source              x        x                   
Suggestion               88-98    54       55-70?     71
Intelligence                                          
Personal part            x        x        x          
of Suggestions                                        
Alternate Dictionaries   x        x        ?          ?
International Support    x        x        ?          ?

   The Suggestion Intelligence is based on a small test kernel of
misspelled/correct word pairs.  Go to `http://aspell.net/test' for more
info and how you can help contribute to the test kernel.  The current
scores for Aspell are 88 in _fast_ mode, 93 in _normal_ mode, and 98 in
_bad spellers_ mode: for more information about the various suggestion
modes *Note Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes::.

   If you have any other information you would like to add to this chart
please contact me at <kevina@gnu.org>.

Comparison to Ispell
--------------------

Features that only Aspell has
.............................

   * Is an actual library that other programs can link to instead of
     having to use it through a pipe.

   * Does a much better job of suggesting possible replacements for a
     misspelled word than Ispell does or for that matter any other spell
     checker I have seen.  If you know a spell checker that does a
     better job please let me know.

   * Can learn from user's misspellings.

   * Can easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special
     dictionary.

   * Has support for using multiple dictionaries at once.

   * Is multiprocess intelligent.  When a personal dictionary (or
     replacement list) is saved it will now first update the list
     against the dictionary on disk in case another process modified it.

   * Can share the memory used in the main word list between processes.

   * A better, more complete word list for the English language.  Word
     lists are provided for American, British, and Canadian spelling.
     Special care has been taken to only include one spelling for each
     word in any particular word list.  The word list included in
     Ispell by contrast only included support for American and British
     and also tends to included multiple spellings for a word which can
     mask some spelling errors.

Things that, currently, only Ispell has
.......................................

   * Lower memory footprint

   * Ability to deal with arbitrary multi-character letters such as old
     ASCII encodings of accented letters.

   * Perhaps better support for spell checking (La)TeX files.


   For a detailed description of how Aspell differs from Ispell, *Note
Differences From Ispell::.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Support,  Next: Basic Usage,  Prev: Introduction,  Up: Top

Support
*******

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


File: aspell.info,  Node: Basic Usage,  Next: Customizing Aspell,  Prev: Support,  Up: Top

Basic Usage
***********

For a quick reference on the Aspell utility use the command `aspell
--help'.

* Menu:

* Spellchecking Individual Files::
* Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell::
* Using Aspell with other Applications::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Spellchecking Individual Files,  Next: Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell,  Up: Basic Usage

Spellchecking Individual Files
==============================

To use Aspell to spellcheck a file use:

     aspell check [OPTIONS] FILENAME

at the command line where `FILENAME' is the file you want to check and
`OPTIONS' is any number of optional options.  Some of the more useful
ones include:

-mode=MODE
     the mode to use when checking files.  The available modes are
     `none', `url', `email', `sgml', `tex', `texinfo', `nroff', among
     others.  For more information on the various modes see *Note Notes
     on Various Filters and Filter Modes::.

-dont-backup
     don't create a backup file.

-sug-mode=MODE
     the suggestion mode to use where mode is one of `ultra', `fast',
     `normal', or `bad-spellers'.  For more information on these modes
     see *Note Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes::.

-lang=NAME/-l NAME
     the language the document is written in.  The default depends on
     the current locale.

-encoding=NAME
     encoding the document is expected to be in.  The default depends
     on the current locale.

-master=NAME/-d NAME
     the main dictionary to use.

-keymapping=NAME
     the keymapping to use.  Either `aspell' for the default mapping or
     `ispell' to use the same mapping that the Ispell utility uses.

   For more information on the available options, please see *Note
Customizing Aspell::.

   For example to check the file `foo.txt':

     aspell check foo.txt

and to check the file `foo.txt' using the `bad-spellers' suggestion
mode and the American English dictionary:

     aspell check --sug-mode=bad-spellers -d en_US foo.txt

   If the `mode' option is not given then Aspell will use the extension
of the file to determine the current mode.  If the extension is `.tex',
then `tex' mode will be used, if the extension is `.html', `.htm',
`.php', or `.sgml' it will check the file in `sgml' mode, otherwise it
will use `url' mode.

   For more information on the various modes that can be used, see
*Note Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes::.

   If Aspell was compiled with curses support and the `TERM'
environment variable is set to a capable terminal type than Aspell will
use a nice full screen interface.  Otherwise it will use a simpler
"dumb" terminal interface where the misspelled word is surrounded by
two '*'.  In either case the interface should be self explanatory.

   If Aspell is compiled with a version of the curses library that
support wide characters than Aspell can also check UTF-8 text.
Furthermore, the document will be displayed in the encoding defined by
the current locale.  This encoding does not necessary have to be the
same encoding that the document is in.  This means that is is possible
to check an 8-bit encoding such as ISO-8859-1 on an UTF-8 terminal.  To
do so simply set the `encoding' option to `iso-8859-1'.  Furthermore it
is also possible to check an UTF-8 document on an 8-bit terminal
provided that the document can be successfully converted into that
encoding.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell,  Next: Using Aspell with other Applications,  Prev: Spellchecking Individual Files,  Up: Basic Usage

Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell
========================================

As of GNU Aspell 0.60.1 Aspell should be able to completely replace
Ispell for most applications.  The Ispell compatibility script should
work for most applications which expect Ispell.  However their are some
differences which you should be aware of.

As a Drop In Replacement
------------------------

Aspell can be used as a drop in replacement for Ispell for programs
that use Ispell through a pipe such as Emacs and LyX.  It can also be
used with programs that simply call the `ispell' command and expect the
original file to be overwritten with the corrected version.

   If you do not have Ispell installed on your system and have installed
the Ispell compatibly script than you should not need to do anything as
most applications will that expect Ispell will work as expected with
Aspell via the Ispell compatibility script.

   Otherwise, the recommended way to use Aspell as a replacement for
Ispell is to change the `ispell' command from within the program being
used.  If the program uses `ispell' in pipe mode simple change `ispell'
to `aspell'.  If the program calls the `ispell' command to check the
file change `ispell' with `aspell check'.

   If that is impossible than the `run-with-aspell' script can be used.
This script modifies the patch so that programs see the Ispell
compatibility script instead of the actual true `ispell' command.  The
format of the script is:

     run-with-aspell COMMAND

where COMMAND is the name of the program with any optional arguments.

   The old method of mapping Ispell to Aspell is discouraged because it
can create compatibility problems with programs that actually require
Ispell such as Ispell's own scripts.

Differences From Ispell
-----------------------

Nevertheless, Aspell is not Ispell, nor is it meant to completely
emulate the behavior of Ispell.  The `aspell' command is not identical
to the `ispell' command when not used in "pipe" mode.  If an
application expects the `ispell' command than the Ispell compatibility
script should be used.

Functionally of the Ispell Compatibility Script
...............................................

The Ispell compatibility script provides the following Ispell
functionally.

   * The ability to check a file when called with out any mode
     parameters.

   * The pipe or -a mode.

   * The list of -l mode.

   * The version or -v mode.  A single line is returned which, while not
     being identical to the line Ispell returns, is sufficient to fool
     most programs.

   * The munch or -c mode.

   * The expand or -e mode.

   * The ability to dump the affix file when called with '-D'.  However
     the format of the affix file is different.  Furthermore, not all
     languages have an affix file.


   However the Ispell script currently unable to emulate the the '-A'
pipe mode.  This is different from the normal pipe mode in that the
special `&Include_File&' command is recognized.

Recognized Options
..................

Aspell, and thus the ispell compatibility script, recognizes most of
the options that Ispell uses except for the '-S', '-w' and '-T'
options.  The Aspell command will simply ignore these options if it
sees them.

Check Mode Compatibility
........................

The interface used by Aspell when checking individual files is slightly
different than Ispell's.  In particular the default keymappings are not
the same as the ones Ispell uses.  However Aspell supports using the
Ispell keymappings via the `keymapping' option.  To use the Ispell
keymappings set the `kepmapping' option to `ispell'.  This can be done
on the command line by adding using the command:

       aspell check --keymapping=ispell ...
or with the Ispell compatibility script
       ispell --keymapping=ispell ...

   The Ispell keymapping can always be used when the Ispell compatibly
script is called by uncommenting the indicated line in the `ispell'
script.

Pipe Mode Compatibility
.......................

The Aspell pipe mode should be identical to the Ispell pipe mode except
if the line starts with a '$$' as that will trigger special Aspell only
commands or if the line starts with a '~' which is ignored by Aspell.

Other Differences
.................

The compiled dictionary format is completely different than Ispell's.
Furthermore the format of the language data files' are different than
Ispell's affix file.  However, all known Ispell dictionaries been
converted to Aspell format, except for Albanian (sq) as I was unable to
find the source word list.

   The naming and format of the personal dictionary is also different.
However, ispell personal dictionaries can be imported using the
`aspell-import' script.  *Note Using aspell-import::.  The Ispell
personal dictionary is simply a list of words while the Aspell one is a
list of words with a header line.  Thus it is also fairly easy to
convert between the two.  *Note Format of the Personal Dictionary::.

Missing Functionally
....................

The only major area where Ispell is superior to Aspell is in the
handling of multi character letters such as old ASCII encoding of
accented characters.

   However, Aspell can handle UTF-8 documents far better than Ispell
can.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Using Aspell with other Applications,  Prev: Using Aspell as a Replacement for Ispell,  Up: Basic Usage

Using Aspell with other Applications
====================================

With Emacs and XEmacs
---------------------

The easiest way to use Aspell with Emacs or XEmacs is to add this line:


(setq-default ispell-program-name "aspell")

   to the end of your .emacs file.

   For some reason version 3.0 of ispell.el (the lisp program that
(x)emacs uses) want to reverse the suggestion list.  To fix this add
this line:


(setq-default ispell-extra-args '("--reverse"))

   after the previous line in your .emacs file and it should solve the
problem.

   Ispell.el, version 3.1 (December 1, 1998) and better, has the list
reversing problem fixed.  You can find it at
`http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html'.

With LyX
--------

Version 1.0 of LyX provides support for Aspell's learning from user's
mistakes feature.

   To use Aspell with LyX 1.0 either change the `spell_command' option
in the `.lyxrc' file or use the `run-with-aspell' utility.

With VIM
--------

To use Aspell in VIM you simply need to add the following line to your
`.vimrc' file:


map ^T :w!<CR>:!aspell check %<CR>:e! %<CR>

   I use `Ctrl-T' since that's the way you spell check in `pico'.  In
order to add a control character to your `.vimrc' you must type
`Ctrl-v' first.  In this case `Ctrl-v Ctrl-t'.

   A more useful way to use Aspell, IMHO, is in combination with
Newsbody (`http://www.image.dk/~byrial/newsbody/') which is how I use it
since VIM is my editor for my mailer and my news reader.

map ^T\\1\\2<CR>:e! %<CR>
map \\1 :w!<CR>
map \\2 :!newsbody -qs -n % -p aspell check \\%f<CR>

With Pine
---------

To use Aspell in Pine simply change the option `speller' to

     aspell --mode=email check

   To change the `speller' option go to the main menu.  Type `S' for
_setup_, `C' for _config_, then `W' for _where is_.  Type in `speller'
as the word to find.  The speller option should be highlighted now.
Hit enter, type in the above line, and hit enter again.  Then type `E'
for _exit setup_ and `Y' to save the change.

   If you have a strong desire to check other people's comments change
`speller' to

     aspell check

instead which will avoid switching Aspell into email mode.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Customizing Aspell,  Next: Working With Dictionaries,  Prev: Basic Usage,  Up: Top

Customizing Aspell
******************

The behavior of Aspell can be changed by any number of options which
can be specified at either the command line, the environment variable
`ASPELL_CONF', a personal configuration file, or a global configuration
file.  Options specified on the command line override options specified
by the environment variable.  Options specified by the environment
variable override options specified by either of the configuration
files.  Finally options specified by the personal configuration file
override options specified in the global configuration file.  Options
specified in the environment variable `ASPELL_CONF', a personal
configuration file, or a global configuration file will take effect no
matter how Aspell is used which includes being used by other
applications.

   Aspell has three basic type of options: "boolean", "value", and
"list".

   "Boolean" options are either enabled or disabled, "value" options
take a specific value, and "list" options can either have entries added
or removed from the list.

* Menu:

* Specifying Options::
* The Options::
* Dumping Configuration Values::
* Notes on Various Options::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Specifying Options,  Next: The Options,  Up: Customizing Aspell

Specifying Options
==================

At the Command Line
-------------------

All options specified at the command line have the following basic
format:

     --OPTION[=VALUE]

where the `=' can be replaced by whitespace.

   However some options also have single letter abbreviations of the
form:

     LETTER [OPTIONAL_WHITESPACE VALUE]

   Any non-ASCII characters are expected to be in the encoding
specified by the current locale.

   To reset an option to the default value prefix the option with a
`reset-' and don't specify a value.

Value options
.............

To specify a value option simply specify the option with its
corresponding value.  For example to set the filter mode to TeX use
`--mode=tex'.

   If a value option has a single letter shortcut simply specify the
single letter shortcut with its corresponding value.  For example to
use a the accented version of the American English dictionary use `-d
en_US-w_accents'.

Boolean options
...............

To enable a boolean option simply specify the option without any
corresponding value, or prefix it with an `enable-'.  For example to
create a backup file use `--backup'.  To disable a boolean option
prefix the option name with a `dont-' or `disable-'.  For avoid
creating a backup file use `--dont-backup'.  Boolean options can also
be set directly like a value option where the value is either "true" or
"false", for example `--backup=true'.

   If a boolean option has a single letter abbreviation simply give the
letter corresponding to either enabling or disabling the option without
any corresponding value.  For example to consider run-together words
legal use `-C' or to consider them illegal use `-B'

List options
............

To add a value to the list, prefix the option name with a `add-' and
then specify the value to add.  For example to add the URL filter use
`--add-filter url'.  To remove a value from a list option prefix the
option name with a `rem-' and then specify the value to remove.  For
example to remove the URL filter use `--rem-filter url'.  To remove all
items from a list prefix the option name with a `clear-' without
specify any value.  For example to remove all filters use
`--clear-filter'.

   A list option can also be set directly, in which case it will be set
to a single value.  To directly set a list option to multiple values
prefix the option name with a `lset-' and separate each value with a
`:'.  For example to use the URL and TeX filter use `--lset-filter
url:tex'.

Via a Configuration File
------------------------

Aspell can also accept options via a personal or global configuration
file.  The exact files to used are specified by the options `per-conf'
and `conf' respectively but the personal configuration file is normally
`.aspell.conf' located in the `HOME' directory and the global one is
normally `aspell.conf' which is located in the `etc' directory which is
normally `/usr/etc' or `/usr/local/etc'.  To find out the particular
values for your particular system use `aspell dump config'.

   Each line of the configuration file has the format:

     OPTION [VALUE]

   There may be any number of spaces between the option and the value
however it can only be spaces, i.e. there is no `=' between the option
name and the value.

   Comments may also be included by preceding them with a `#' as
anything from a `#' to a newline is ignored.  Blank lines are also
allowed.

   To include a literal `#' use `\#'.  To include a literal `\' use
`\\'.  Any other non-alpha character can also be protected by a `\' if
necessary.

   Any non-ASCII characters are expected to be in UTF-8.

   To reset an option to the default value prefix the option with a
`reset-' and don't specify a value.

   Values set in the personal configuration file override those in the
global file.  Options specified at either the command line or via an
environment variable override those specified by either configuration
file.

     Filters and corresponding options also may be assembled inside a
     special meta filter file named `METAFILTER.flt'.  A filter has to
     be loaded via adding a `add-filter FILTERNAME' line to the meta
     filter file before its options may be specified.

Value options
.............

To specify a value option simply include the option followed by the
corresponding option.  For example to set the default language to
German use `lang german'.

Boolean options
...............

To specify a boolean option simply include the option followed by a
`true' to enable it or a `false' to disable it.  For example to allow
run-together words use `run-together true'.

List options
............

To add a value to the list, prefix the option name with a `add-' and
then specify the value to add.  For example to add the URL filter use
`add-filter url'.  To remove a value from a list option prefix the
option name with a `rem-' and then specify the value to remove.  For
example to remove the URL filter use `rem-filter url'.  To remove all
items from a list prefix the option name with a `clear-' without
specifying any value.  For example to remove all filters use
`clear-filter'.

   A list option can also be set directly, in which case it will be set
to a single value.  To directly set a list option to multiple values
prefix the option name with a `lset-' and separate each value with a
`:'.  For example to use the URL and TeX filter use `lset-filter
url:tex'.  To include a literal `:' use `\:'.

Setting Options via an Environment Variable
-------------------------------------------

The environment variable `ASPELL_CONF' may also be used and it
overrides any options set in the configuration file.  The format of the
string is exactly the same as the configuration file except that
semicolons (`;') are used instead of newlines.


File: aspell.info,  Node: The Options,  Next: Dumping Configuration Values,  Prev: Specifying Options,  Up: Customizing Aspell

The Options
===========

The following is a list of available options broken down by category.
Each entry has the following format:

    OPTION[,SINGLE-LETTER-ABBREVIATION]
          (TYPE) DESCRIPTION

   Where single letter options are specified as they would appear at the
command line, ie with the preceding dash.  Boolean single letter
options are specified in the following format:

     -<abbreviation to enable>|-<abbreviation to disable>

   OPTION is one of the following: _boolean_, _string_, _file_, _dir_,
_integer_, or _list_.

   _String_, _file_, _dir_, and _integer_ types are all value options
which can only take a specific type of value.

Dictionary Options
------------------

The following options may be used to control which dictionaries to use
and how they behave (for more information see *Note How Aspell Selects
an Appropriate Dictionary::):

master,-d
     (string) Base name of the dictionary to use.  If this option is
     specified than Aspell will either use this dictionary or die.

dict-dir
     (dir) Location of the main word list.

lang
     (string) Language to use, it follows the same format of the `LANG'
     environment variable on most systems.  It consists of the two
     letter ISO 639 language code and an optional two letter ISO 3166
     country code after a dash or underscore.  The default value is
     based on the value of the `LC_MESSAGES' locale.

size
     (string) The preferred size of the word list.

variety
     (list) Any extra information to distinguish two different words
     lists that have the same lang and size.

word-list-path
     (list) Search path for word list information files.

personal,-p
     (file) Personal word list file name.

repl
     (file) Replacements list file name.

extra-dicts
     (list) Extra dictionaries to use.

dict-alias
     (list) create dictionary aliases.  Each entry has the form `FROM
     TO'.  Will override any system dictionaries that are present.


Encoding Options
----------------

These options control the encoding the document is expected to be in and
how it is displayed.

encoding
     (string) The encoding the input text is in.  Valid values include,
     but not limited to, `iso-8859-*', `utf-8', `ucs-2', `ucs-4'.  When
     using the Aspell utility the default encoding is based on the
     current locale.  Thus if your locale currently uses the `utf-8'
     encoding than everything will be in UTF-8.  The `ucs-2' and
     `ucs-4' encodings are intended to be used by other programs using
     the Aspell library and is not supported by the Aspell utility.

normalize
     (boolean) Perform Unicode normalization.  Enabled by default.

norm-strict
     (boolean) Avoid lossy conversions when normalizing.  Lossy
     conversions includes compatibility mappings such as splitting the
     letter `OE' (U+152) into `O' and `E' (when the combined letter is
     not available), and mappings which will remove accents.  Disabled
     by default except when creating dictionaries.

norm-form
     (string) The normalization form the output should be in.  This
     option primarily effects the normalization form of the suggestions
     as when spell checkering as the actual text is unchanged unless
     there is an error.  Valid values are `none', `nfd' for fully
     decomposition (Normalization Form D), `nfc' for Normalization Form
     C, or `comp' for fully composed.  `comp' is like `nfc' except that
     _full_ composition is used rather than _canonical_ composition.
     The `normalize' option must be enabled for this option to be used.

norm-required
     (boolean) Set to true when the current language requires Unicode
     normalization.  This is generally the case when private use
     characters are used internally by Aspell or when Normalization
     Form C is not the same as full composition.


Checker Options
---------------

These options control the behavior of Aspell when checking documents.

ignore,-W
     (integer) Ignore words with N characters or less

ignore-repl
     (boolean) Ignore commands to store replacement pairs.

save-repl
     (boolean) Save the replacement word list on save all.

keyboard
     (file) The base name of the keyboard definition file to use (*note
     Notes on Typo-Analysis::)

sug-mode
     (mode) Suggestion mode = `ultra' | `fast' | `normal' | `slow' |
     `bad-spellers' (*note Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes::)

ignore-case
     (boolean) Ignore case when checking words.

ignore-accents
     (boolean) Ignore accents when checking words - _currently ignored_.


Filter Options
--------------

These options modify the behavior of the Aspell filter interface in
general (for more information see *note Notes on Various Filters and
Filter Modes::).

filter
     (list) filters to use

filter-path
     (list) Where to look when loading filter and filter modes.

mode
     (string) Sets the filter mode.  Possible values include, but not
     limited to, `none', `url', `email', `sgml', or `tex'.  (The
     shortcut options `-e' may be used for email, `-H' for HTML, or
     `-t' for TeX).


   These options belong to filters packaged along with Aspell standard
distribution.  These options may be prefixed by the keyword `f-' in
order to explicitly indicate that they are options recognized by a
filter and not by Aspell itself.

email
.....

This filter hides quoting characters and email preamble and other parts
of an email which need not to be spell checked.

email-quote
     (list) Email quote characters.

email-margin
     (integer) The number of characters that can appear before the
     quote character

html
....

This filter converts an HTML source file into a format which eases
spell checking of HTML texts by Aspell.

html-check
     (list) HTML attributes to always check, such as alt= (alternate
     text).

html-skip
     (list) HTML tags to always skip the contents of, such as <script>.

sgml
....

This filter is identical to the HTML filter except that it options has
different default values which are currently the empty list.

tex/latex
.........

This filter hides all LaTeX commands and corresponding parameters not
being readable text in LaTeX output from Aspell.

tex-command
     (list) TeX commands

tex-check-comments
     (boolean) check TeX comments


texinfo
.......

This filter hides all Texinfo command from Aspell.  It can also hide
Texinfo parameters and environments not corresponding to readable text.

texinfo-ignore
     (list) Texinfo command to ignore the parameters of.

texinfo-ignore-env
     (list) Texinfo environments to ignore.


context
.......

This filter can be used to spell check source codes, HTML sources and
other texts which consist of different contexts.  These contexts must
be separated by pairs of unique delimiters.  The different contexts may
not be dependent upon each other except for initial context which is
assumed if not any other context applies.

context-visible-first
     (boolean) Switches the context which should be visible to Aspell.
     Per default the initial context is assumed to be invisible as one
     would expect when spell checking source files of programs where
     relevant parts are contained in string constants and comments but
     not in the remaining code.  If set to true the initial context is
     visible while the delimited ones are hidden.

add|rem-context-delimiters
     (list) Add or remove pairs of delimiters.  This allows you to
     specify the character, or sequences of characters, which should be
     used to switch contexts and therefore have to be escaped by `\' if
     they should appear literally.  The two delimiting chars belonging
     to one pair have to be separated by a space character.  If
     multiple pairs are specified by one `add|rem-context-delimiters'
     call the different pairs have to be separated by a literal comma.
     Per default the delimiters are set to C/C++ comment and string
     constant delimiters.  If the end of line delimits a context than
     this has to be indicated by the literal `\0' string.

Run-together Word Options
-------------------------

These may be used to control the behavior of run-together words (for
more information *note Controlling the Behavior of Run-together
Words::):
run-together,-C|-B
     (boolean) consider run-together words legal

run-together-limit
     (integer) maximum numbers that can be strung together

run-together-min
     (integer) minimal length of interior words

Miscellaneous Options
---------------------

Miscellaneous other options that don't fall under any other category
conf
     (file) main configuration file

conf-dir
     (dir) location of main configuration file

data-dir
     (dir) location of language data files

local-data-dir
     (dir) alternative location of language data files.  This directory
     is searched before `data-dir'.  It defaults to the same directory
     the actual main word list is in (which is not necessarily
     `dict-dir').

home-dir
     (dir) location for personal files

per-conf
     (file) personal configuration file

prefix
     (dir) prefix directory

set-prefix
     (boolean) set the prefix based on executable location (only works
     on WIN32 and when compiled with `--enable-win32-relocatable')

Aspell Utility Options
----------------------

backup,-b|-x
     (boolean) Create a backup file by appending `.bak' to the file
     name.  (Only applies when the command is `check').

time
     (boolean) Time load time and suggest time in `pipe' mode.

byte-offsets
     (boolean) Use byte offsets instead of character offsets in `pipe'
     mode.

reverse
     (boolean) Reverse the order of the suggestions list in `pipe' mode.

keymapping
     (string) the keymapping to use.  Either `aspell' for the default
     mapping or `ispell' to use the same mapping that the Ispell utility
     uses.

guess
     (boolean) make possible root/affix combinations not in the
     dictionary in `pipe' mode.

suggest
     (boolean) Suggest possible replacements in `pipe' mode.  If false
     Aspell will simply report the misspelling and make no attempt at
     suggestions or possible corrections.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Dumping Configuration Values,  Next: Notes on Various Options,  Prev: The Options,  Up: Customizing Aspell

Dumping Configuration Values
============================

To find out the current value of all the options use the command
`aspell dump config'.  This will dump the current configuration to
standard output.  The format of the contents dumped is such that it can
be used as either the global or personal configuration file.

   To find out the current value of a particular option use `aspell
config OPTION'.  This will print out the value of OPTION to `stdout'
and nothing else.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on Various Options,  Prev: Dumping Configuration Values,  Up: Customizing Aspell

Notes on Various Options
========================

* Menu:

* Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes::
* Notes on the Prefix Option::
* Notes on Typo-Analysis::
* Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes,  Next: Notes on the Prefix Option,  Up: Notes on Various Options

Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes
-----------------------------------------

Aspell now has filter support.  You can either select from individual
filters or choose a filter mode.  To select a filter mode use the
`mode' option.  You may choose from `none', `url', `email', `sgml',
`ccpp', `tex' and any other available on your system.  The default mode
is `url'.  Individual filters can be added with the option `add-filter'
and removed with the `rem-filter' option.  The currently available
filters are `url', `email', `sgml' and `tex', `latex' (alias for
`tex'), `nroff', `context', as well as a bunch of filters which
translate the text from one format to another.

   To check which filters are available use `aspell dump filters'.  To
check which filter modes are available use `aspell dump modes'.  The
`aspell help' command will also list all available filter and filter
modes.

None Filter Mode
................

The `none' mode is exactly what it says.  It turns off all filters.

URL Filter
..........

The `url' filter/mode skips over URLs, host names, and email addresses.
Because this filter is almost always useful and rarely does any harm
it is enabled in all modes except `none'.  To turn it off either select
the `none' mode or use `rem-filter' option _after_ the desired mode is
selected.

Email Filter
............

The `email' filter mode skips over quoted text.  It currently does not
support skipping over headers however a future version should.  In the
meantime I suggest you use Aspell with Newsbody which can be found at
`http://home.worldonline.dk/~byrial/newsbody/'.  The option
`email-skip' controls the number of characters that can appear before
the email quote character, the default is 10.  The option
`add|rem-email-quote' controls the characters that are considered quote
characters, the defaults are `>' and `|'.

SGML Filter
...........

The SGML filter allows you to spell check SGML, HTML, XHTML, and XML
files. In most cases everything within a tag `<tag attrib=value
attrib2="a whole sentence">' will be skipped by the spell checker. The
SGML/HTML/XML that Aspell supports is a slight superset of most DTDs
(Document Type Definitions) and can spell check the often non-conforming
HTML found on the web.

   Two configuration options, `sgml-skip' and `sgml-check', allow you
to control what is spell checked. The tag and attribute names specified
are case insensitive.

sgml-skip
     This is a list of tags whose contents will also be skipped by the
     spell checker.  For example, if you wish to leave a misspelling in
     a document and not have them flagged as misspellings, you could
     surround them with a <nospellcheck> tag:
            <TD><FONT size=2><NOSPELLCHECK>leviosa</NOSPELLCHECK>
            is what Mr. Potter said</FONT></TD>

     And put that word in the skip config directive:
          add-sgml-skip nospellcheck

sgml-check
     This is a list of attributes whose values you do want spell
     checked. By default, 'alt' (<img> alternate text) is a member of
     the check list since it is text that is seen by a web page viewer.
     You may also want 'value' to be on the check list since that is
     the text put on buttons:
          add-sgml-check value

     In this case `<input type=button value="Donr">' will be flagged as
     a misspelling.

   This filter will also translate SGML characters of the form
`&#num;'.  Other SGML characters such as `&amp;' will simply be skipped
over so that the word `amp', for example, will not be spell checked.
Eventually full support for properly translating SGML characters will
be added.

HTML Filter
...........

The `html' filter is like the SGML Filter Mode but specialized for
HTML.  By default, 'script' and 'style' are members of the skip list in
HTML mode.

TeX/LaTeX Filter
................

The `tex' (all lowercase) filter mode skips over TeX commands and
parameters and/or options to certain commands.  It also skips over TeX
comments by default.  The option `[dont-]tex-check-comments' controls
whether or not Aspell will skip over TeX comments.  The option
`add|rem-tex-command' controls which TeX commands should have certain
parameters and/or options also skipped over.  Commands that are not
specified will have all their parameters and/or options checked.  The
format for each item is

     <command> <a list of p,P,o and Os>

   The first item is simply the command name.  The second item controls
which parameters to skip over.  A 'p' skips over a parameter while a
'P' doesn't.  Similar an 'o' will skip over an optional parameter while
a 'O' doesn't.  The first letter on the list will apply to the first
parameter, the second letter will apply to the second parameter etc.
If there are more parameters than letters Aspell will simply check them
as normal.  For example the option

     add-tex-command rule pp

will skip over the first two parameters of the `rule' command while the
option

     add-tex-command foo Pop

will _check_ the first parameter of the `foo' command, skip over the
next optional parameter, if it is present, and will skip over the
second parameter -- even if the optional parameter is not present --
and will check any additional parameters.

   A `*' at the end of the command is simply ignored.  For example the
option

     enlargethispage p

will ignore the first parameter in both `enlargethispage' and
`enlargethispage*'.

   To remove a command simple use the `rem-tex-command' option.  For
example

     rem-tex-command foo

will remove the command foo, if present, from the list of TeX commands.

   The TeX filter mode is also available via `latex' alias name.

Texinfo Filter
..............

The `texinfo' filter allows you to spell check Texinfo files.  It will
skip over any Texinfo commands and their parameters when appropriate.
It will also skip over some Texinfo environments such as `example'.
The list option `texinfo-ignore' controls which commands to ignore the
parameters of and the list option `texinfo-ignore-env' controls which
Texinfo environments to ignore.

   The Texinfo filter has special code to deal with the `@table' and
related commands.  It will apply the formating command to each of the
`@item' or `@itemx' commands just like Texinfo will.  This means that
if the formatting command is `@code' and and the `@code' command is a
member of the `texinfo-ignore' option than the Texinfo filter will
ignore the parameter of the `@item' command as if the parameter was also
the parameter of the `@code' command.

   The Texinfo filter will also skip over the `\input texinfo' line.

Nroff Filter
............

The `nroff' filter mode allows you to check the spelling of Nroff
documents. The mode is enabled by giving `--add-filter=nroff' or `-n'
command line option to `aspell'. It is also automatically enabled if
the first three characters of the file being checked are `.\"' (a
`nroff' comment marker) or the file name ends in a one of the following
suffixes:

   * single decimal digit from `0' to `9'

   * letter `n'

   * `tmac'

This filter mode skips following `nroff' language elements:

   * Comments

   * Requests

   * Names of `nroff' registers (both traditional two-letter names and
     GNU nroff long names)

   * Arguments to the following requests: `ds', `de', `nr', `do', `so'.

   * Arguments to font switch (`\f') and size switch (`\s') escapes

   * Arguments to extended charset escape in both traditional (`\(')
     and extended (`\[comp1 comp2 ...]') form.

Context Filter
..............

The _context_ filter allows Aspell to distinguish between visible and
invisible contexts.  The visible ones will be spell checked and the
invisible ones will be ignored.  The contexts are distinguished by the
fact that the visible/invisible ones are delimited by specific and
unique delimiter characters or character sequences.  Whether the
delimited contexts should be visible or invisible only stated by the
value of the `[dont-]context-visible-first' option and not by the
delimiters.

   The context delimiters are specified as pairs of delimiters via the
`add|rem-context-delimiters' option.  The delimiters enclosing a
specific context are specified as a space separated pair.  If more than
one delimiter pair is specified by one call of
`add|rem-context-delimiters' they have to be combined to a comma
separated list.  To indicate that a context is always closed by end of
line use `\0' sequence as closing delimiter.

Ccpp Filter Mode
................

The `ccpp' filter mode will limit spell checking to C/C++ comments and
string literals. Any code in between will be left alone.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on the Prefix Option,  Next: Notes on Typo-Analysis,  Prev: Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes,  Up: Notes on Various Options

Notes on the Prefix Option
--------------------------

The `prefix' option is there to allow Aspell to easily be relocated.
Changing `prefix' will change all directory names relative to the new
prefix that are not explicitly set.  For example if `prefix' was
`/usr/local/aspell' and `dict-dir' has a default value of
`/usr/local/aspell/dict' than changing `prefix' to `/opt/aspell' will
also change the default value of `dict-dir' to `/opt/aspell/dict'.
Note that modifying `prefix' will only effect the default compiled in
values of directories.  If a directory option is explicitly given a
value than changing the value of `prefix' has no effect on that
directory option.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on Typo-Analysis,  Next: Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes,  Prev: Notes on the Prefix Option,  Up: Notes on Various Options

Notes on Typo-Analysis and the Keyboard Definition File
-------------------------------------------------------

Aspell .33 and better will, in general, give a higher priority to
certain misspellings which are likely to be due to typos such as `teh'
instead of `the' or `hapoy' instead of `happy'.  However in order to do
this well Aspell needs to know the layout of the keyboard via the
keyboard definition file.  The keyboard definition file simply
identifies the keys on the keyboard and which of them are right next to
each other.  It has an extension of `.kbd' and all non-ASCII characters
are expected to be in UTF-8.

   To identify a key use:

     key BASE OTHER ...

where BASE is the base character that the key types, and OTHER are
other keys that the key can produce.  For example

     key a A á Á

   It generally is only necessary to list keys which type more than one
distinct letter as Aspell can derive the rest from the language data
file.  For example, it is not necessary to include the previously
mentioned key.

   To identify two keys as being right next to each other simply list
the type keys right after each other.  For example the line:

     as

will indicate that `a' and `s' are right next to each other.  If `as'
is listed as a entry it is not necessary to list `sa' as an entry as
that will be done automatically.  Also by "right next to each other" I
mean two keys that are close enough together that it is easy to type
one instead of the other.  On most keyboards this means keys that are
to the left or to the right of each other and _not_ keys that are below
or above it.

   The default for this option is normally `standard'.  However the
default can be changed via the language data file.  The normal default,
`standard', should work well for most QWERTY like keyboard layouts.  It
may need minor adjusting for foreign keyboards.  The `dvorak' option
can be used for a Dvorak layout.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes,  Prev: Notes on Typo-Analysis,  Up: Notes on Various Options

Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes
---------------------------------------

In order to understand what these suggestion modes do, a basic
understanding of how Aspell works is required.  For that see *Note
Aspell Suggestion Strategy::.

   The suggestion modes are as follows.

ultra
     This method will use the fastest method available to come up with
     decent suggestions.  This currently means that it will look for
     soundslikes within one edit distance apart without doing any
     typo-analysis or using replacement tables.  In this mode Aspell
     gets about 87% of the words from my small test kernel of
     misspelled words.  (Go to `http://aspell.net/test' for more info
     on the test kernel as well as comparisons of this version of
     Aspell with previous versions and other spell checkers.)

fast
     This method is like `ultra' except that it also performs
     typo-analysis and uses replacement tables.  The typo-analysis
     brings words which are likely to be due to typos to the beginning
     of the list.  This mode should get around the same number of words
     that the `ultra' method does.

normal
     This method normally looks for soundslikes within two edit distance
     apart and performs typo-analysis unless it is turned off.  Is is
     much slower than fast mode but it returns better suggestions. This
     mode gets 93% of the words.

slow
     Normally identical to `normal'.

bad-spellers
     This method also looks for soundslikes within two edit distances
     apart but is tailored more for the bad speller, where as `fast' or
     `normal' are tailored more to strike a good balance between typos
     and true misspellings.  This mode never performs typo-analysis and
     returns a _huge_ number of words for the really bad spellers who
     can't seem to get the spelling anything close to what it should
     be.  If the misspelled word looks anything like the correct
     spelling it is bound to be found _somewhere_ on the list of 100 or
     more suggestions.  This mode gets 98% of the words.

   If jump tables were not used then the `normal' option is identical
to `fast'.  And the `slow' option is identical to the `normal' if jump
tables were used.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Working With Dictionaries,  Next: Writing programs to use Aspell,  Prev: Customizing Aspell,  Up: Top

Working With Dictionaries
*************************

* Menu:

* Using aspell-import::
* How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary::
* Listing Available Dictionaries::
* Dumping the Contents of the Word List::
* Creating an Individual Word List::
* Working With Affix Info in Word Lists::
* Format of the Personal and Replacement Dictionaries::
* Using Multi Dictionaries::
* Dictionary Naming::
* AWLI files::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Using aspell-import,  Next: How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Using `aspell-import'
=====================

The `aspell-import' Perl script will look for old personal dictionaries
and will import them into GNU Aspell.  It will look for both Ispell and
Aspell ones.  To use it, just run it from the command prompt.  If you
get an error about `/usr/bin/perl' not being found, then instead try
`perl BINDIR/aspell-import'.  When running the script if you get a
message like:


Error: No word lists can be found for the language "de".

   This means that you have not installed support for the given
language, in this case `de' for German.  To rectify the situation
download and install a dictionary designed to work with GNU Aspell 0.50
or better.


File: aspell.info,  Node: How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary,  Next: Listing Available Dictionaries,  Prev: Using aspell-import,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary
============================================

If the `master' option is set in any fashion (via the command line, the
`ASPELL_CONF' environment variable, or a configuration file) Aspell
will look for a dictionary of that name.  If one could not be found, it
will complain.

   Otherwise it will use the value of the `lang' option to search for
an appropriate dictionary.  If more than one dictionary is found for
the given language string then it will look for a dictionary with a
matching variety if the `variety' option is set.  If it is not set it
will look for a dictionary without a variety.  If after matching the
`lang' and `variety' there is still more than one dictionary available
it will find one with the size closest to the value of the `size'
option.  The default size is 60.  If Aspell cannot find a dictionary
based on the `lang' option then it will give up and complain.

   If the `lang' option is not explicitly set its value will be based
on the `LC_MESSAGES' locale.  This locale is generally taken from the
`LC_MESSAGES' environment variable or the `LANG' environment variable
if `LC_MESSAGES' is not set.  However, if Aspell is being used as a
library from within another program which already explicitly set the
locale then it will use the locale of the library rather than the
environment variables.  If Aspell cannot determine the language from
the `LC_MESSAGES' locale than it will default to `en_US'.

   The list option `dict-alias' can be used to influence which
dictionary is selected by creating an alias from one dictionary name to
another.  This option is most useful when there is more than one
dictionary for a given language.  For example `add-dict-alias en_US
en_US-w_accents' will cause Aspell to choose the accented version of
the American English dictionary instead of the non-accented version.
To add an alias use:

     add-dict-alias NAME VAL


File: aspell.info,  Node: Listing Available Dictionaries,  Next: Dumping the Contents of the Word List,  Prev: How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Listing Available Dictionaries
==============================

For a list of available dictionaries use the command `aspell dump
dicts'.  This will form a list of dictionaries that Aspell will search
when a dictionary is not specifically given.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Dumping the Contents of the Word List,  Next: Creating an Individual Word List,  Prev: Listing Available Dictionaries,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Dumping the Contents of the Word List
=====================================

The dump command in `aspell' will simply dump the contents of a word
list to `stdout' in a format that can be read back in with `aspell
create'.

   If no word list is specified the command will act on the default one.
For example the command

     aspell dump personal

will simply dump the contents of the current personal word list to
`stdout'.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Creating an Individual Word List,  Next: Working With Affix Info in Word Lists,  Prev: Dumping the Contents of the Word List,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Creating an Individual Word List
================================

To create an individual main word list from a list of words use the
command

     aspell --lang=LANG create master ./BASE < WORDLIST

where BASE is the name of the word list and WORDLIST is the list of
words separated by white space.  The name of the word list will
automatically be converted to all lowercase.  The `./' is important
because without it Aspell will create the word list in the normal word
list directory.  If you are trying to create a word list in a language
other than English check the Aspell `data-dir' (usually
`/usr/share/aspell', use `aspell dump config' to find out what it is on
your system) to see if a language data file exists for your language.
If not you will need to create one.  For more information on using
Aspell with other languages *Note Adding Support For Other Languages::.

   This will create the file `BASE' in the current directory.  To use
the new word list copy the file to the normal word list directory (use
`aspell config' to find out what it is) and use the option
`--master=BASE'.

   During the creating of the dictionary you may get a number of
warnings or errors about invalid words or affixes.  By default Aspell
will skip any invalid words and remove invalid affixes.  If you rather
that Aspell simply accepts all words given then the option
`--dont-validate-words' can be specified.  To avoid checking if affixes
are valid use the option `--dont-validate-affixes'.  However, rather
than disable checking, it is preferable to clean the input word list.
This can be done by using the command

     aspell --local-data-dir=./ --lang=LANG clean < WORDLIST > RESULT

which will clean the word list and output the results to RESULT.  By
default it will remove invalid characters from the beginning and end of
a word before resorting to skipping the word.  If you rather it just
skip the words than add the keyword strict:

     aspell --local-data-dir=./ --lang=LANG clean strict < WORDLIST > RESULT

   The option `--clean-words' can be be added when creating a
dictionary if you want Aspell to remove invalid characters from the
beginning and end of a word like the "clean" command does. In addition
the options `--dont-skip-invalid-words' and `--dont-clean-affixes' can
be specified to turn the warnings into errors.

   The compiled dictionary file are endian order dependent.  When a
dictionary is loaded the endian order is checked.  Please do not
distribute the compiled dictionaries unless you are only distributing
them for a particular platform such as you would a binary.

   Aspell is now also able to use special `multi' dictionaries.  for
more information *Note How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary::.

   A personal and replacement word list can be created in a similar
fashion.

Format of the Replacement Word List
-----------------------------------

The replacement word list has each replacement pair on its own line in
the following format

     misspelled_word correction


File: aspell.info,  Node: Working With Affix Info in Word Lists,  Next: Format of the Personal and Replacement Dictionaries,  Prev: Creating an Individual Word List,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Working With Affix Info in Word Lists
=====================================

The Munch Command
-----------------

The `munch' command takes a list of words from standard input and
outputs a list of possible root words and affixes.  The root may,
however, be invalid as it does not check them against the exiting
dictionary.  For example the command:
     echo brother | aspell -l en munch
produces
     brother broth/R brothe/R

The Expand Command
------------------

The `expand' command is the reverse of `munch', it expands affix flags
to produce a list of words.  For example:
     echo both/R | aspell -l en expand
produces
     both bother

   It formal usage is:
     aspell expand [LEVEL] [LIMIT]

Where LEVEL is the expansion level.  Valid values are between 1 and 3.
Level 1 is the default if not otherwise specified.  Level 2 causes the
original root/affix to be included, for example:
     both/R both bother

Level 3 causes multiple lines to be printed, one for each generated
word, with the original root/affix combination followed by the word it
creates:
     both/R both
     both/R bother

Levels larger than 3 may also be supported, but should not used as they
may eventually be removed.

   If a LIMIT parameter is given than only expansions which effect the
first LIMIT letters will be expanded.  If a base word is not completely
expanded for a given affix flag that flag will be left on the word.
Note that prefixes are always expanded.

The Munch-list Command
----------------------

The `munch-list' command will reduce the size of word list via affix
compression.  It will reduce a list of words to a minimal (or close to
it) set of roots and affixes that will match the same list of words.
The list of words is read from standard input and the result, the
"munched" list, is written to standard out.  It's usage is:

     aspell munch-list [keep] [single|multi] [simple] < INFILE > OUTFILE

where `simple', `single', `multi', and `keep' are literal values.

   The default algorithm used should give near optimum results.  In some
cases the set of words returned is, provably, the minimum number
possible.  In the typical case the number of words returned is within
1% of the optimum number.

   By default Aspell will remove redundant affix flags.  The `keep'
flag will avoid removing them, which can be useful if you want to
include all possible expansions for each base word.

   When cross products are involved it may be beneficial to list a base
word more than once.  Unfortunately, the current version of Aspell can
not correctly handle multiple base words in a dictionary.  Therefore,
the current default behavior is to only include the one with the most
expansions.  All of them can be included via the `multi' flag.  Once
aspell is able to handle multiple base words the default will be to
include them all.  The `single' flag can be used to only include one of
them.

   The `simple' flag will select an alternate faster algorithm.  This
algorithm is very similar to the `munch' command distributed with
Myspell (the Open Office spell checker), however, it doesn't give
nearly as good results.  It does okay for the English word list but not
for some other languages such as German; the normal algorithm reduced a
list of 312,002 German words to 79,420 base words while the simple
algorithm only reduced it to 115,927 words.  This algorithm may
disappear in a future version of Aspell.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Format of the Personal and Replacement Dictionaries,  Next: Using Multi Dictionaries,  Prev: Working With Affix Info in Word Lists,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Format of the Personal and Replacement Dictionaries
===================================================

Format of the Personal Dictionary
---------------------------------

The personal dictionary generally has a name of the form:
     .aspell.LANG.pws

   The file has a header line of the form:
     personal_ws-1.1 LANG NUM

where NUM is the number of words in the list.  This number is only used
as a hint, and thus does not have to be accurate.  When creating a new
dictionary it is perfectly acceptable for NUM to be 0.

   The rest of the file is simply a word list with one line per word.

Format of the Personal Replacement Dictionary
---------------------------------------------

The personal replacement dictionary generally has a name of the form:
     .aspell.LANG.prepl

   The file has a header line of the form:
     personal_repl-1.1 LANG NUM

where NUM is currently unused and thus always 0.

   The rest of the file is simply of replacements with one replacement
per line with each replacement pair has the following format:

     MISSPELLED_WORD CORRECTION


File: aspell.info,  Node: Using Multi Dictionaries,  Next: Dictionary Naming,  Prev: Format of the Personal and Replacement Dictionaries,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Using Multi Dictionaries
========================

As with previous versions of Aspell you can specify the main dictionary
to use via the `-d' or `--master' option.  However as of Aspell .32 you
can now also:

  1. Specify more than word list to use with the `extra-dicts' option.

  2. Specify special _multi_ dictionaries.

   The `extra-dicts' is a list option.  To add a dictionary use
`add-extra-dicts' or to remove a dictionary from the list use
`rem-extra-dicts'.

   A _multi_ dictionary is a special file which is basically a list of
dictionary files to use.  A _multi_ dictionary must end in `.multi' and
has roughly the same format as a configuration file with the only
accepted key being `add'.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Dictionary Naming,  Next: AWLI files,  Prev: Using Multi Dictionaries,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

Dictionary Naming
=================

In order for Aspell to be able to correctly recognize a dictionary
based on the setting of the `LANG' environment variable the
dictionaries need to be located somewhere Aspell can find them and they
need to be _multi_ dictionaries.  Where aspell looks for dictionaries
depends on the value of the `dict-dir' and `word-list-path' option.

   `dict-dir' is generally `PREFIX/lib/aspell', and `word-list-path' is
generally empty.

   Each dictionary that you expect Aspell to be able to find needs to
have a name in the following format:

     LANGUAGE[_REGION][-VARIETY][-SIZE].multi

where LANGUAGE is the two letter language code, REGION is the two
letter region code, VARIETY is any extra information to distinguish the
word list from other ones with the same language and spelling.
Multiple varieties can be used by separating them with a '-'.  Finally,
SIZE is the size of the dictionary.  If no size is specified that the
default size of 60 will be assumed.

   For example:

     en.multi
     en_US.multi
     en-medical.multi
     en-medical-85.multi
     en-85.multi
     de.multi


File: aspell.info,  Node: AWLI files,  Prev: Dictionary Naming,  Up: Working With Dictionaries

AWLI files
==========

In order for Aspell to find dictionaries that are located in odd places
or not named according to *Note Dictionary Naming::, an AWLI file needs
to be created for the dictionary and located in some place where Aspell
can find it.

   Each AWLI file has a name in the following format:

     LANGUAGE[REGION][-VARIETY][-SIZE]-MODULE.awli

where the names have the same meaning as in *Note Dictionary Naming::,
and MODULE is the speller module to use, which should be set to DEFAULT
for now since there is only one speller module.

   Each `awli' file for an Aspell word list should then contain exactly
one line which contains the full path of the main word list.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Writing programs to use Aspell,  Next: Adding Support For Other Languages,  Prev: Working With Dictionaries,  Up: Top

Writing programs to use Aspell
******************************

There are two main ways to use Aspell from within your application.
Through the external C API or through a pipe.  The internal Aspell API
can be used directly but that is not recommended as the actual Aspell
API is constantly changing.

* Menu:

* Through the C API::
* Through A Pipe::
* Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Through the C API,  Next: Through A Pipe,  Up: Writing programs to use Aspell

Through the C API
=================

The Aspell library contains two main classes and several helper
classes.  The two main classes are `AspellConfig' and `AspellSpeller'.
The `AspellConfig' class is used to set initial defaults and to change
spell checker specific options.  The `AspellSpeller' class does most of
the real work.  The `C API' is responsible for managing the
dictionaries, checking if a word is in the dictionary, and coming up
with suggestions among other things. There are many helper classes the
important ones are `AspellWordList', `AspellMutableWordList',
`Aspell*Enumeration'.  The `AspellWordList' classes is used for
accessing the suggestion list, as well as the personal and suggestion
word list currently in use.  The `AspellMutableWordList' is used to
manage the personal, and perhaps other, word lists.  The
`Aspell*Enumeration' classes are used for iterating through a list.

Usage
-----

To use Aspell your application should include `aspell.h'.  In order to
ensure that all the necessary libraries are linked in libtool should be
used to perform the linking.  When using libtool simply linking with
`-laspell' should be all that is necessary.  When using shared
libraries you might be able to simply link `-laspell', but this is not
recommended.  This version of Aspell uses the CVS version of libtool
however released versions of libtool should also work.

   When your application first starts you should get a new configuration
class with the command:

     AspellConfig * spell_config = new_aspell_config();

which will create a new `AspellConfig' class.  It is allocated with
`new' and it is your responsibility to delete it with
`delete_aspell_config'.  Once you have the config class you should set
some variables.  The most important one is the language variable.  To
do so use the command:

     aspell_config_replace(spell_config, "lang", "en_US");

which will set the default language to use to American English.  The
language is expected to be the standard two letter ISO 639 language
code, with an optional two letter ISO 3166 country code after an
underscore.  You can set the preferred size via the `size' option, any
extra info via the `variety' option, and the encoding via the
`encoding' option.  Other things you might want to set is the preferred
spell checker to use, the search path for dictionaries, and the like --
see *Note The Options::, for a list of all available options.

   Whenever a new document is created a new `AspellSpeller' class
should also be created.  There should be one speller class per
document.  To create a new speller class use the `new_aspell_speller'
and then cast it up using `to_aspell_speller' like so:

     AspellCanHaveError * possible_err = new_aspell_speller(spell_config);
     AspellSpeller * spell_checker = 0;
     if (aspell_error_number(possible_err) != 0)
       puts(aspell_error_message(possible_err));
     else
       spell_checker = to_aspell_speller(possible_err);

which will create a new `AspellSpeller' class using the defaults found
in `spell_config'.  To find out which dictionary is selected the
`lang', `size', and `variety' options may be examined.  To find out the
exact name of the dictionary the `master' option may be examined as
well as the `master-flags' options to see if there were any special
flags that were passed on to the module.  The `module' option way also
be examined to figure out which speller module was selected, but since
there is only one this option will always be the same.

   If for some reason you want to use different defaults simply clone
`spell_config' and change the setting like so:

     AspellConfig * spell_config2 = aspell_config_clone(spell_config);
     aspell_config_replace(spell_config2, "lang","nl");
     possible_err = new_aspell_speller(spell_config2);
     delete_aspell_config(spell_config2);

   Once the speller class is created you can use the `check' method to
see if a word in the document is correct like so:

     int correct = aspell_speller_check(spell_checker, WORD, SIZE);

WORD is expected to be a `const char *' character string.  If the
encoding is set to be `ucs-2' or `ucs-4' WORD is expected to be a cast
from either `const u16int *' or `const u32int *' respectively.
`u16int' and `u32int' are generally `unsigned short' and `unsigned int'
respectively.  SIZE is the length of the string or `-1' if the string
is null terminated.  If the string is a cast from `const u16int *' or
`const u32int *' then `size' is the amount of space in bytes the string
takes up after being cast to `const char *' and not the true size of
the string.  `sspell_speller_check' will return `0' if it is not found
and non-zero otherwise.

   If the word is not correct, then the `suggest' method can be used to
come up with likely replacements.

     AspellWordList * suggestions = aspell_speller_suggest(spell_checker,
                                                           WORD, SIZE);
     AspellStringEnumeration * elements = aspell_word_list_elements(suggestions);
     const char * word;
     while ( (word = aspell_string_enumeration_next(aspell_elements)) != NULL )
     {
       // add to suggestion list
     }
     delete_aspell_string_enumeration(elements);

   Notice how `elements' is deleted but `suggestions' is not.  The
value returned by `suggestions' is only valid to the next call to
`suggest'.  Once a replacement is made the `store_repl' method should
be used to communicate the replacement pair back to the spell checker
(for the reason, *note Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs::).  Its
usage is as follows:

     aspell_speller_store_repl(spell_checker, MISSPELLED_WORD, SIZE,
                               CORRECTLY_SPELLED_WORD, SIZE);

   If the user decided to add the word to the session or personal
dictionary the the word can be be added using the `add_to_session' or
`add_to_personal' methods respectively like so:

     aspell_speller_add_to_session|personal(spell_checker, word, size);

   It is better to let the spell checker manage these words rather than
doing it yourself so that the words have a chance of appearing in the
suggestion list.

   Finally, when the document is closed the `AspellSpeller' class
should be deleted like so:

     delete_aspell_speller(spell_checker);

API Reference
-------------

Methods that return a boolean result generally return `false' on error
and `true' otherwise.  To find out what went wrong use the
`error_number' and `error_message' methods.  Unless otherwise stated
methods that return a `const char *' will return `NULL' on error.  In
general, the character string returned is only valid until the next
method which returns a `const char *' is called.

   For the details of the various classes please see the header files.
In the future I will generate class references using some automated
tool.

Examples
--------

Two simple examples are included in the examples directory.  The
`example-c' program demonstrates most of the Aspell library
functionality and the `list-dicts' lists the available dictionaries.

Notes About Thread Safety
-------------------------

Aspell should be thread safe, when used properly, as long as the
underlying compiler, C and C++ library is thread safe.  Aspell objects,
including the AspellSpeller class, should not be used by multiple
threads unless they are protected by locks or it is only accessed by
read-only methods.  A method is read-only only if a `const' object is
passed in.  Many methods that seam to be read-only are not because they
may store state information in the object.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Through A Pipe,  Next: Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs,  Prev: Through the C API,  Up: Writing programs to use Aspell

Through A Pipe
==============

When given the `pipe' or `-a' command, Aspell goes into a pipe mode
that is compatible with `ispell -a'.  Aspell also defines its own set
of extensions to Ispell pipe mode.

Format of the Data Stream
-------------------------

In this mode, Aspell prints a one-line version identification message,
and then begins reading lines of input.  For each input line, a single
line is written to the standard output for each word checked for
spelling on the line.  If the word was found in the main dictionary, or
your personal dictionary, then the line contains only a `*'.

   If the word is not in the dictionary, but there are suggestions, then
the line contains an `&', a space, the misspelled word, a space, the
number of near misses, the number of characters between the beginning
of the line and the beginning of the misspelled word, a colon, another
space, and a list of the suggestions separated by commas and spaces.

   Finally, if the word does not appear in the dictionary, and there are
no suggestions, then the line contains a `#', a space, the misspelled
word, a space, and the character offset from the beginning of the line.
Each sentence of text input is terminated with an additional blank
line, indicating that Aspell has completed processing the input line.

   These output lines can be summarized as follows:

     *OK*: *
     *Suggestions*: & original count offset: miss, miss, ...
     *None*: # original offset

   When in the `-a' mode, Aspell will also accept lines of single words
prefixed with any of `*', `&', `@', `+', `-', `~', `#', `!', `%', or
`^'.  A line starting with `*' tells Aspell to insert the word into the
user's dictionary.  A line starting with `&' tells Aspell to insert an
all-lowercase version of the word into the user's dictionary.  A line
starting with `@' causes Aspell to accept this word in the future.  A
line starting with `+', followed immediately by a valid mode will cause
Aspell to parse future input according the syntax of that formatter.  A
line consisting solely of a `+' will place Aspell in TeX/LaTeX mode
(similar to the `-t' option) and `-' returns Aspell to its default mode
(which is Nroff unless otherwise specified).  (but these commands are
obsolete).  A line `~', is ignored for Ispell compatibility.  A line
prefixed with `#' will cause the personal dictionaries to be saved.  A
line prefixed with `!' will turn on terse mode (see below), and a line
prefixed with `%' will return Aspell to normal (non-terse) mode.  Any
input following the prefix characters `+', `-', `#', `!', `~', or `%'
is ignored, as is any input following.  To allow spell-checking of
lines beginning with these characters, a line starting with `^' has
that character removed before it is passed to the spell-checking code.
It is recommended that programmatic interfaces prefix every data line
with an uparrow to protect themselves against future changes in Aspell.

   To summarize these:

`*WORD' Add a word to the personal dictionary
`&WORD' Insert the all-lowercase version of the word in the personal
        dictionary
`@WORD' Accept the word, but leave it out of the dictionary
`#'     Save the current personal dictionary
`~'     Ignored for Ispell compatibility.
`+'     Enter TeX mode.
`+MODE' Enter the mode specified by MODE.
`-'     Enter the default mode.
`!'     Enter terse mode
`%'     Exit terse mode
`^'     Spell-check the rest of the line

   In terse mode, Aspell will not print lines beginning with `*', which
indicate correct words.  This significantly improves running speed when
the driving program is going to ignore correct words anyway.

   In addition to the above commands which are designed for Ispell
compatibility Aspell also supports its own extensions.  All Aspell
extensions follow the following format.

     $$COMMAND [DATA]

   Where DATA may or may not be required depending on the particular
command.  Aspell currently supports the following commands:

`cs OPTION,VALUE'        Change a configuration option.
`cr OPTION'              Prints the value of a configuration option.
`pp'                     Returns a list of all words in the current
                         personal wordlist.
`ps'                     Returns a list of all words in the current
                         session dictionary.
`l'                      Returns the current language name.
`ra MIS,COR'             Add the word pair to the  replacement
                         dictionary for later use. Returns nothing.

   Anything returned is returned on its own line.  All lists returned
have the following format

     num of items: item1, item2, etc

   _(Part of the preceding section was directly copied out of the
Ispell manual)_


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs,  Prev: Through A Pipe,  Up: Writing programs to use Aspell

Notes on Storing Replacement Pairs
==================================

The `store_repl' method and the `$$ra' should be used because Aspell is
able to learn from users misspellings.  For example on the first pass a
user misspells _beginning_ as _beging_ so Aspell suggests:

     begging, begin, being, Beijing, bagging, ....

However the user then tries _begning_ and Aspell suggests

     beginning, beaning, begging, ...

so the user selects _beginning_.  However, later on in the document the
user misspells it as _begng_ (*not* _beging_).  Normally Aspell will
suggest.

     began, begging, begin, begun, ...

However because it knows the user misspelled _beginning_ as _beging_ it
will instead suggest:

     beginning, began, begging, begin, begun ...

   I myself often misspelled beginning (and still do) as something close
to begging and two many times wind up writing sentences such as
"begging with ...".

   Please also note that replacements commands has a memory.  Which
means if you first store the replacement pair:

     sicolagest -> psycolagest

then store the replacement pair

     psycolagest -> psychologist

The replacement pair

     sicolagest -> psychologist

will also get stored so that you don't have to worry about it.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Adding Support For Other Languages,  Next: Implementation Notes,  Prev: Writing programs to use Aspell,  Up: Top

Adding Support For Other Languages
**********************************

Before you consider adding support for Aspell, first make sure that
someone else has not already done it.  A good number of dictionaries
off the Aspell home page at `http://aspell.net'.  If your language is
not listed above please send me a note and I will work with you on
adding support.

   Adding a language to Aspell is fairly straightforward.  You basically
need to create the language data file, and compile a new word list.

* Menu:

* The Language Data File::
* Compiling the Word List::
* Phonetic Code::
* The Simple Soundslike::
* Replacement Tables::
* Affix Compression::
* Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words::
* Creating A New Character Set::
* Format of the Character Set Data File::
* Creating An Official Dictionary Package::


File: aspell.info,  Node: The Language Data File,  Next: Compiling the Word List,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

The Language Data File
======================

The basic format of the language data file is the same as it is for the
Aspell configuration file.  It is named `LANG.dat' and is located in
the architecture independent data dir for Aspell (option `data-dir')
which is usually `PREFIX/share/aspell'.  Use `aspell config' to find
out where it is in your installation.  By convention the language name
should be the two letter ISO 639 language code if it exists, if not use
the three letter code.

   The language data file has several mandatory fields, and several
optional ones.  All fields are case sensitive and should be in all
lower case.

   The two mandatory fields are `name' and `charset'.

   `name' is the name of the language and should be the same as the
file name (without the `.dat').

   `charset' is the 8-bit character set Aspell will expect the word
lists to be formatted in.  If possible choose from one of the standard
ones provided with Aspell.  These are `iso-8859-*', `koi8-*', or
`viscii'.  If your language does not require any non-ascii characters
choose `iso-8859-1'.  If one of these standard character sets is not
suitable for your language than you can create a new one.  *Note
Creating A New Character Set::.

   The optional fields are as follows:

`data-encoding'
     The encoding the language data files are expected to be in as well
     as the default encoding to use when saving the personal
     dictionaries.  It can be either `utf-8' or any of the 8-bit
     encoding that Aspell supports.  If not set, then it defaults to
     `charset'.

`special'
     Non-letter characters that can appear in your language such as the
     `'' and `-'. The format for the value is a list separated by
     spaces.  Each item of the list has the following format.

          <char> <begin><middle><end>

     CHAR is the non letter character in question.  BEGIN, MIDDLE, END
     are either a `-' or a `*'.  A star for BEGIN means that the
     character can begin a word, a `-' means it can't.  The same is
     true for MIDDLE and END. For example, the entry for the `'' in
     English is:

          ' -*-

     To include more than one middle character just list them one after
     another on the same line.  For example, to make both the `'' and
     the `-' a middle character, use the following line in the language
     data file:

          special ' -*- - -*-

`soundslike'
     The name of the soundslike data for the language.  The data is
     expected to be in the file `NAME_phonetic.dat'.

     If NAME is `simpile' then a very simple soundslike is used.  This
     is nearly as powerful as full phonetic soundslike but it can be
     computed a lot faster.  (*note The Simple Soundslike::)

     If the soundslike name is `none', or this option is not specified,
     than no soundslike will be used.  The effective soundslike is the
     word converted to all lowercase and possibly with accents stripped
     depending on the `store-as' option.  For languages with phonetic
     spelling the difference will not be very noticeable.  However, for
     languages with non-phonetic spelling there will be a noticeable
     difference.  The difference you notice will depend on the quality
     of the soundslike data file.  If you do not notice much of a
     difference for a language with non-phonetic spelling that is a good
     indication that the soundslike data is not rough enough--or the
     words you are trying are not that badly misspelled.

`invisible-soundslike'
     Avoid storing the soundslike information with the word.  Instead
     it is computed as needed.  This option defaults to true if the
     soundslike is `none' or `simpile', and false when a phonetic
     soundslike is used.

`repl-table'
     *Note Replacement Tables::.

`keyboard'
     The base name of the keyboard definition file to use.  For more
     information see *Note Notes on Typo-Analysis::.

`sug-split-char'
     A list of characters which specifies which characters to insert
     between two words when a word is split.  This is a list option.

`affix'
`affix-compress'
`partially-expand'
     *Note Affix Compression::.

`store-as'
     How the words are indexed in the dictionary.  If "stripped" then
     the word is indexed in a lower case and de-accented form.  If
     "lower", then the word is indexed in a lower case form but with
     accent info still intact.  This just controls how the word is
     indexed, not how it is stored.  The default is "stripped" unless
     affix compression is used.

`norm-required'
     Should be set to true if your language makes use of private use
     characters or when Normalization Form C is not the same as full
     composition.

`normalize'

`norm-form'

   Additional options includes options to control how run-together words
are handled the same way as they are in the normal configuration files.
for more information, please *Note Controlling the Behavior of
Run-together Words::.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Compiling the Word List,  Next: Phonetic Code,  Prev: The Language Data File,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Compiling the Word List
=======================

Once you have a working language data file installed in the right place
you are ready to compile the main word list.  To find out what to do,
see *Note Working With Dictionaries::.  This section also includes
instructions for creating the AWLI file.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Phonetic Code,  Next: The Simple Soundslike,  Prev: Compiling the Word List,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Phonetic Code
=============

Aspell is in fact the spell checker that comes up with the best
suggestions if it finds an unknown word.  One reason is that it does
not just compare the word with other words in the dictionary (like
Ispell does) but also uses phonetic comparisons with other words.

   The new table driven phonetic code is very flexible and setting up
phonetic transformation rules for other languages is not difficult but
there can be a number of stumbling blocks -- that's why I wrote this
section.

   The main phonetic code is free of any language specific code and
should be powerful enough to allow setting up rules for any language.
Anything which is language specific is kept in a plain text file and
can easily be edited.  So it's even possible to write phonetic
transformation rules if you don't have any programming skills.  All you
need to know is how words of the language are written and how they are
pronounced.

Syntax of the transformation array
----------------------------------

In the translation array there are two strings on each line; the first
one is the search string (or switch name) and the second one is the
replacement string (or switch parameter).  The line

     version   VERSION

is also required to appear somewhere in the translation array.  The
version string can be anything but it should be changed whenever a new
version of the translation array is released.  This is important
because it will keep Aspell from using a compiled dictionary with the
wrong set of rules.  For example, if when coming up with suggestion for
`hallo', Aspell will use the new rules to come up with the soundslike
say `H*L*', but if `hello' is stored in the dictionary using the old
rules as `HL' instead of `H*L*' Aspell will never be able to come up
with `hello'.  So to solve this problem Aspell checks if the version
strings match and aborts with an error if they don't.  Thus it is
important to update it whenever a new version of the translation array
is released.  This is only a problem with the main word list as the
personal word lists are now stored as simple word lists with a single
header line (i.e. no soundslike data).

   Each non switch line represents one replacement (transformation)
rule.  Words beginning with the same letter must be grouped together;
the order inside this group does not depend on alphabetical issues but
it gives priorities; the higher the rule the higher the priority.
That's why the first rule that matches is applied.  In the following
example:

     GH   _
     G    K

`GH -> _' has higher priority than `G -> K'

   `_' represents the empty string "".  If `GH -> _' came after `G ->
K', the second rule would never match because the algorithm would stop
searching for more rules after the first match.  The above rules
transform any `GH' to an empty string (delete them) and transforms any
other `G' to `K'.

   At the end of the first string of a line (the search string) there
may optionally stand a number of characters in brackets.  One (only
one!)  of these characters must fit.  It's comparable with the `[ ]'
brackets in regular expressions.  The rule `DG(EIY) -> J' for example
would match any `DGE', `DGI' and `DGY' and replace them with `J'.  This
way you can reduce several rules to one.

   Before the search string, one or more dashes `-' may be placed.
Those search strings will be matched totally but only the beginning of
the string will be replaced.  Furthermore, for these rules no follow-up
rule will be searched (what this is will be explained later).  The rule
`TCH-- '-> _ will match any word containing `TCH' (like `match') but
will only replace the first character `T' with an empty string.  The
number of dashes determines how many characters from the end will not
be replaced.  After the replacement, the search for transformation
rules continues with the not replaced `CH'!

   If a `<' is appended to the search string, the search for
replacement rules will continue with the replacement string and not with
the next character of the word.  The rule `PH< -> F' for example would
replace `PH' with `F' and then again start to search for a replacement
rule for `F...'.  If there would also be rules like `FO '-> `O' and `F
-> _' then words like `PHOXYZ' would be transformed to `OXYZ' and any
occurrences of `PH' that are not followed by an `O' will be deleted like
`PHIXYZ -> IXYZ'.  The second replacement however is not applied if the
priority of this rule is lower than the priority of the first rule.

   Priorities are added to a rule by putting a number between 0 and 9 at
the end of the search string, for example `ING6 -> N'.  The higher the
number the higher is the priority.

   Priorities are especially important for the previously mentioned
follow-up rules.  Follow-up rules are searched beginning from the last
string of the first search string.  This is a bit complicated but I
hope this example will make it clearer:

     CHS      X
     CH       G
     
     HAU--1   H
     
     SCH      SH

   In this example `CHS' in the word `FUCHS' would be transformed to
`X'.  If we take the word `DURCHSCHNITT' then things look a bit
different.  Here `CH' belongs together and `SCH' belongs together and
both are spoken separately.  The algorithm however first finds the
string `CHS' which may not be transformed like in the previous word
`FUCHS'.  At this point the algorithm can find a follow up rule.  It
takes the last character of the first matching rule (`CHS') which is
`S' and looks for the next match, beginning from this character.  What
it finds is clear: It finds `SCH -> SH', which has the same priority
(no priority means standard priority, which is 5).  If the priority is
the same or higher the follow-up rule will be applied.  Let's take a
look at the word `SCHAUKEL'.  In this word `SCH' belongs together and
may not be taken apart.  After the algorithm has found `SCH '-> `SH' it
searches for a follow-up rule for `H+'`AUKEL'.  It finds `HAU--1 -> H',
but does not apply it because its priority is lower than the one of the
first rule.  You see that this is a very powerful feature but it also
can easily lead to mistakes.  If you really don't need this feature you
can turn it off by putting the line:

     followup      0

at the beginning of the phonetic table file.  As mentioned, for rules
containing a `-' no follow-up rules are searched but giving such rules
a priority is not totally senseless because they can be follow-up rules
and in that case the priority makes sense again.  Follow-up rules of
follow-up rules are not searched because this is in fact not needed
very often.

   The control character `^' says that the search string only matches
at the beginning of words so that the rule `RH -> R' will only apply to
words like `RHESUS' but not `PERHAPS'.  You can append another `^' to
the search string.  In that case the algorithm treats the rest of the
word totally separately from the first matched string at the beginning.
This is useful for prefixes whose pronunciation does not depend on the
rest of the word and vice versa like `OVER^^' in English for example.

   The same way as `^' works does `$' only apply to words that end with
the search string.  `GN$ -> N' only matches on words like `SIGN' but
not `SIGNUM'.  If you use `^' and `$' together, both of them must fit
`ENOUGH^$ -> NF' will only match the word `ENOUGH' and nothing else.

   Of course you can combine all of the mentioned control characters but
they must occur in this order: `< - priority ^ $'.  All characters must
be written in CAPITAL letters.

   If absolutely no rule can be found -- might happen if you use strange
characters for which you don't have any replacement rule -- the next
character will simply be skipped and the search for replacement rules
will continue with the rest of the word.

   If you want double letters to be reduced to one you must set up a
rule like `LL- -> L'.  If double letters in the resulting phonetic word
should be allowed, you must place the line:

     collapse_result     0

at the beginning of your transformation table file; otherwise set the
value to `1'.  The English rules for example strip all vowels from
words and so the word "GOGO" would be transformed to "K" and not to
"KK" (as desired) if `collapse_result' is set to 1.  That's why the
English rules have `collapse_result' set to `0'.

   By default, all accents are removed from a word before it is matched
to the soundslike rules.  If you do not want this then add the line

     remove_accents      0

   at the beginning of your file.  The exact definition of an accent is
language dependent and is controlled via the character set file.  If you
set remove_accents to '0' then you should also set "store-as" to "lower"
in the language data file (not the phonetic transformation file)
otherwise Aspell will have problems when both the accented and the
de-accented version of a word appearing in the dictionary; it will
consider one of them as incorrectly spelled.

How do I start finally?
-----------------------

Before you start to write an array of transformation rules, you should
be aware that you have to do some work to make sure that things you do
will result in correct transformation rules.

Things that come in handy
.........................

First of all, you need to have a large word list of the language you
want to make phonetics for.  It should contain about as many words as
the dictionary of the spell checker.  If you don't have such a list,
you will probably find an Ispell dictionary at
`http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/geoff/ispell-dictionaries.html' which will
help you.  You can then make affix expansion via `ispell -e' and then
pipe it through `tr " " "\n"' to put one word on each line.  After that
you eventually have to convert special characters like `é' from
Ispell's internal representation to latin1 encoding.  `sed s/e'/é/g'
for example would replace all `e'' with `é'.

   The second is that you know how to use regular expressions and know
how to use `grep'.  You should for example know that:

     grep ^[^aeiou]qu[io] wordlist | less

will show you all words that begin with any character but `a', `e',
`i', `o' or `u' and then continue with `qui' or `quo'.  This stuff is
important for example to find out if a phonetic replacement rule you
want to set up is valid for all words which match the expression you
want to replace.  Taking a look at the regex(7) man page is a good idea.

What the phonetic code should do
................................

Normal text comparison works well as long as the typer misspells a word
because he pressed one key he didn't really want to press.  In these
cases, mostly one character differs from the original word.

   In cases where the writer didn't know about the correct spelling of
the word, the word may have several characters that differ from the
original word but usually the word would still sound like the original.
Someone might think that `tough' is spelled `taff'.  No spell checker
without phonetic code will come to the idea that this might be `tough',
but a spell checker who knows that `taff' would be pronounced like
`tough' will make good suggestions to the user.  Another example could
be `funetik' and `phonetic'.

   From these examples you can see that the phonetic transformation
should not be too fussy and too precise.  If you implement a whole
phonetic dictionary as you can find it in books this will not be very
useful because then there could still be many characters differing from
the misspelled and the desired word.  What you should do if you
implement the phonetic transformation table is to reduce the number of
used letters to the only really necessary ones.

   Characters that sound similar should be reduced to one.  In English
language for example `Z' sounds like `S' and that's why the
transformation rule `Z -> S' is present in the replacement table.  "PH
is spoken like "F and so we have a `PH -> F' rule.

   If you take a closer look you will even see that vowels sound very
similar in the English language: `contradiction', `cuntradiction',
`cantradiction' or `centradiction' in fact sound nearly the same, don't
they? Therefore the English phonetic replacement rules not only reduce
all vowels to one but even remove them all (removing is done by just
setting up no rule for those letters).  The phonetic code of
"contradiction" is "KNTRTKXN" and if you try to read this
letter-monster loud you will hear that it still sound a bit like
`contradiction'.  You also see that "D" is transformed to "T" because
they nearly sound the same.

   If you think you have found a regularity you should _always_ take
your word list and `grep' for the corresponding regular expression you
want to make a transformation rule for.  An example: If you come to the
idea that all English words ending on `ough' sound like `AF' at the end
because you think of `enough' and `tough'.  If you then `grep' for the
corresponding regular expression by `grep -i ough$ wordlist' you will
see that the rule you wanted to set up is not correct because the rule
doesn't fit to words like `although' or `bough'.  So you have to define
your rule more precisely or you have to set up exceptions if the number
of words that differ from the desired rule is not too big.

   Don't forget about follow-up rules which can help in many cases but
which also can lead to confusion and unwanted side effects.  It's also
important to write exceptions in front of the more general rules (`GH'
before `G' etc.).

   If you think you have set up a number of rules that may produce some
good results try them out! If you run Aspell as `aspell
--lang=YOUR_LANGUAGE pipe' you get a prompt at which you can type in
words.  If you just type words Aspell checks them and eventually makes
suggestions if they are misspelled.  If you type in `$$Sw WORD' you
will see the phonetic transformation and you can test out if your work
does what you want.

   Another good way to check that changes you make to your rules don't
have any bad side effects is to create another list from your word list
which contains not only the word of the word list but also the
corresponding phonetic version of this word on the same line.  If you
do this once before the change and once after the change you can make a
diff (see `man diff') to see what _really_ changed.  To do this use the
command `aspell --lang=YOUR_LANGUAGE soundslike'.  In this mode aspell
will output the the original word and then its soundslike separated by
a tab character for each word you give it.  If you are interested in
seeing how the algorithm works you can download a set of useful
programs from
`http://members.xoom.com/maccy/spell/phonet-utils.tar.gz'.  This
includes a program that produces a list as mentioned above and another
program which illustrates how the algorithm works.  It uses the same
transformation table as Aspell and so it helps a lot during the process
of creating a phonetic transformation table for Aspell.

   During your work you should write down your basic ideas so that other
people are able to understand what you did (and you still know about it
after a few weeks).  The English table has a huge documentation
appended as an example.

   Now you can start experimenting with all the things you just read and
perhaps set up a nice phonetic transformation table for your language
to help Aspell to come up with the best correction suggestions ever
seen also for your language.  Take a look at the Aspell homepage to see
if there is already a transformation table for your language.  If there
is one you might also take a look at it to see if it could be improved.

   If you think that this section helped you or if you think that this
is just a waste of time you can send any feedback to
<bjoern.jacke@gmx.de>.


File: aspell.info,  Node: The Simple Soundslike,  Next: Replacement Tables,  Prev: Phonetic Code,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

The Simple Soundslike
=====================

The simple soundslike goes something like this:

     sl0[0] = lookup0(word[0])
     for (i = 1; i < size; i++)
       sl0[i] = lookup(word[i]);
     s = 0;
     for (i = 0; i < size; i++)
       sl.append(al0[i]) unless sl0[i] == 0 || sl0[i] == sl0[i-1];

   Basically each character can be converted to another character or
deleted.  A separate lookup table is used for the first character.  If
the same soundslike letter is repeated, the duplicate is removed.

   By default all accents are removed, and all vowels are deleted unless
they appear at the start of the word in which case they are converted
to a `*'.  The exact behavior can be customized via the character data
file.

   The simplified soundslike has the advantage that it is very fast to
compute and thus does not need to be stored with a word.  Also, when
affix compression is used and the `partially-expand' is given the
results will be identical to the results when affix compression is not
used.

   Of course it is not nearly as powerful as the phonetic soundslike.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Replacement Tables,  Next: Affix Compression,  Prev: The Simple Soundslike,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Replacement Tables
==================

When phonetic code is not used a replacement table can be used instead.
To enable the use of a replacement table add the line `repl-table
LANG', in which case the replacement table is excepted to be in the
file `LANG_repl.dat'.  A complete file name can also be specified in
place of LANG.  For compatibility with MySpell the replacement table
can also be part of the affix file, in which case `repl-table' will be
`LANG_affix.dat"'.

   Replacement table syntax:

     REP [number_of_replacement_definitions]
     REP [what] [replacement]
     REP [what] [replacement]

   For example a possible English replacement table definition to
handle misspelled consonants:

     REP 8
     REP f ph
     REP ph f
     REP f gh
     REP gh f
     REP j dg
     REP dg j
     REP k ch
     REP ch k


File: aspell.info,  Node: Affix Compression,  Next: Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words,  Prev: Replacement Tables,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Affix Compression
=================

Aspell, as of version 0.60, now has support for affix compression.  The
codebase comes from MySpell found in OpenOffice.

   To add support for affix compression add the following lines to the
language data file.

     affix          LANG
     affix-compress true

   The line `affix LANG' adds support for recognizing affix
information, and the line `affix-compress true' enables affix
compression.

   The affix file is expected to be named `LANG_affix.dat'.  It is the
exact same format as those used by MySpell.  More information can be
found in the myspell/ directory of the distribution or at
`http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/dictionary.html'.

   Affix compression can also be used with soundslike lookup.  Aspell
does this by only storing the soundslike for the root word.  When a
word is misspelled it will search for a soundslike close to all
possible roots of the misspelled word.

   When no soundslike information, or the simple soundslike, is used it
may be beneficial to specify the option `partially-expand' which will
partially expand a word with affix information so that the affix flags
do not effect the first 3 letters of the word.  This will allow Aspell
to get more accurate results when scanning the list for near misses
since the full word can be used and not just the root.  Specifying this
option, however, will also effectively expand any prefixes.  Thus this
option should not be used for prefix heavy languages such as Hebrew.

   An existing word list, without affix info, can be affix compressed
using using `aspell munch-list'.

Format of the Affix File
------------------------

An affix is either a  prefix or a suffix attached to root words to make
other words.  For example supply -> supplied by dropping the "y" and
adding an "ied" (the suffix).

   Here is an example of how to define one specific suffix borrowed
from the English affix file.

     SFX D Y 4
     SFX D   0     d          e
     SFX D   y     ied        [^aeiou]y
     SFX D   0     ed         [^ey]
     SFX D   0     ed         [aeiou]y

   This file is space delimited and case sensitive.  So this information
can be interpreted as follows:

   The first line has 4 fields:

1    SFX         indicates this is a suffix
2    D           is the name of the character which represents this suffix
3    Y           indicates it can be combined with prefixes (cross product)
4    4           indicates that sequence of 4 affix entries are needed to
                 properly store the affix information

   The remaining lines describe the unique information for the 4 affix
entries that make up this affix.  Each line can be interpreted as
follows: (note fields 1 and 2 are used as a check against line 1 info)

1    SFX         indicates this is a suffix
2    D           is the name of the character which represents this affix
3    y           the string of chars to strip off before adding affix (a 0
                 here indicates the NULL string)
4    ied         the string of affix characters to add (a 0 here indicates
                 the NULL string)
5    [^aeiou]y   the conditions which must be met before the affix can be
                 applied

   Field 5 is interesting.  Since this is a suffix, field 5 tells us
that there are 2 conditions that must be met.  The first condition is
that the next to the last character in the word must _not_ be any of the
following "a", "e", "i", "o" or "u".  The second condition is that the
last character of the word must end in "y".

When Compared With Ispell
-------------------------

Now for comparison purposes, here is the same information from the
Ispell `english.aff' compression file which was used as the basis for
the OOo one.

     flag *D:
         E           >       D               # As in create > created
         [^AEIOU]Y   >       -Y,IED          # As in imply > implied
         [^EY]       >       ED              # As in cross > crossed
         [AEIOU]Y    >       ED              # As in convey > conveyed

   The Ispell information has exactly the same information but in a
slightly different (case-insensitive) format:

   Here are the ways to see the mapping from Ispell .aff format to our
OOo format.

  1. The ispell english.aff has flag D under the "suffix" section so
     you know it is a suffix.

  2. The D is the character assigned to this suffix

  3. `*' indicates that it can be combined with prefixes

  4. Each line following the : describes the affix entries needed to
     define this suffix

        * The first field is the conditions that must be met.

        * The second field is after the > if a "-" occurs is the string
          to strip off (can be blank).

        * The third field is the string to add (the affix)

   In addition all chars in ispell aff files are in uppercase.

Specifying Affix Flags
----------------------

Affix flags are specified in the word list by specifying them after the
`/' character:

     WORD/FLAGS

   For example:

     create/DG

will associate the `D' and `G' flag with the word create.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words,  Next: Creating A New Character Set,  Prev: Affix Compression,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words
==============================================

Aspell currently has support for unconditionally accepting run-together
words.

   Support for unconditionally accepting run-together words can either
be turned on in the language data file or as a normal option via the
`run-together' option.  The `run-together-limit' options controls the
maximum number of words that can be strung together, the default is
normally 2.  The `run-together-min' options controls the minimum length
of the individual components of the run together word, the default is
normally 3.  Both the `run-together-limit' and `run-together-min'
option may be specified in both the language data file or as a normal
option.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Creating A New Character Set,  Next: Format of the Character Set Data File,  Prev: Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Creating A New Character Set
============================

If there is not a standard character set for your language than you can
invent one.  The new charset will only be used by Aspell internally.
If the option `data-encoding' is set to `utf-8', and your current
locale character type is always set to `utf-8', than you can use UTF-8
for everything and not worry yourself that an 8-bit character set is
being used internally.  If your language has no more than 210 distinct
symbols, including different capitalizations and accents, than Aspell
can support it.

   In order to create a new character set you will need to download the
file `aspell-lang-VERSION.tar.bz2' from `ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/'
and follow the instructions in the `README' file.  Version 0.1, and 0.2
of mkchardata _will not_ work as the format of the character data file
has changed.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Format of the Character Set Data File,  Next: Creating An Official Dictionary Package,  Prev: Creating A New Character Set,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Format of the Character Set Data File
=====================================

The character set data files that Aspell uses can be fine tuned.  If
this is done, that character set file should be renamed to `LANG.cset'.

   The line(s) starting with `=' do not specify the exact name of the
file, but rather the name of the unicode mapping that is used.  Unless
you change the unicode mapping, this line should not be changed.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Creating An Official Dictionary Package,  Prev: Format of the Character Set Data File,  Up: Adding Support For Other Languages

Creating An Official Dictionary Package
=======================================

Once you have a basic dictionary working, you should consider creating
an official package so that it can be distributed with Aspell.  To do so
download <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/aspell-lang-VERSION.tar.bz2>.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Implementation Notes,  Next: Languages Which Aspell can Support,  Prev: Adding Support For Other Languages,  Up: Top

Implementation Notes
********************

* Menu:

* Aspell Suggestion Strategy::
* Notes on 8-bit Characters::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Aspell Suggestion Strategy,  Next: Notes on 8-bit Characters,  Up: Implementation Notes

Aspell Suggestion Strategy
==========================

The magic behind my spell checker comes from merging Lawrence Philips
excellent metaphone algorithm and Ispell's near miss strategy which is
inserting a space or hyphen, interchanging two adjacent letters,
changing one letter, deleting a letter, or adding a letter.

   The process goes something like this.

  1. Convert the misspelled word to its soundslike equivalent (its
     metaphone for English words).

  2. Find all words that have a soundslike within one or two edit
     distances from the original word's soundslike.  The edit distance
     is the total number of deletions, insertions, exchanges, or
     adjacent swaps needed to make one string equivalent to the other.
     When set to only look for soundslikes within one edit distance it
     tries all possible soundslike combinations and checks if each one
     is in the dictionary.  When set to find all soundslike within two
     edit distances it scans through the entire dictionary and quickly
     scores each soundslike.  The scoring is quick because it will give
     up if the two soundslikes are more than two edit distances apart.

  3. Find misspelled words that have a correctly spelled replacement by
     the same criteria of step number 2 and 3.  That is the misspelled
     word in the word pair (such as "teh -> the") would appear in the
     suggestions list as if it was a correct spelling.

  4. Score the result list and return the words with the lowest score.
     The score is roughly the weighed average of the weighed edit
     distance of the word to the misspelled word and the soundslike
     equivalent of the two words.  The weighted edit distance is like
     the edit distance except that the various edits have weights
     attached to them.

  5. Replace the misspelled words that have correctly spelled
     replacements with their replacements and remove any duplicates
     that might arise because of this.

   Please note that the soundslike equivalent is a rough approximation
of how the words sounds.  It is not the phoneme of the word by any
means.  For more details about exactly how each step is performed
please see the file `suggest.cc'.  For more information on the metaphone
algorithm please see the data file `english_phonet.dat'.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on 8-bit Characters,  Prev: Aspell Suggestion Strategy,  Up: Implementation Notes

Notes on 8-bit Characters
=========================

There is a very good reason I use 8-bit characters in Aspell. Speed and
simplicity. While many parts of my code can fairly easily be converted
to some sort of wide character as my code is clean. Other parts can not
be.

   One of the reasons because is many, many places I use a direct lookup
to find out various information about characters. With 8-bit characters
this is very feasible because there is only 256 of them. With 16-bit
wide characters this will waste a LOT of space. With 32-bit characters
this is just plain impossible. Converting the lookup tables to another
form is certainly possible but degrades performance significantly.

   Furthermore, some of my algorithms relay on words consisting only on
a small number of distinct characters (often around 30 when case and
accents are not considered). When the possible character can consist of
any Unicode character this number becomes several thousand, if that. In
order for these algorithms to still be used, some sort of limit will
need to be placed on the possible characters the word can contain. If I
impose that limit, I might as well use some sort of 8-bit characters
set which will automatically place the limit on what the characters can
be.

   There is also the issue of how I should store the word lists in
memory? As a string of 32 bit wide characters. Now that is using up 4
times more memory than characters would and for languages that can fit
within an 8-bit character that is, in my view, a gross waste of memory.
So maybe I should store them is some variable width format such as
UTF-8. Unfortunately, way, way too many of the algorithms will simply
not work with variable width characters without significant
modification which will very likely degrade performance. So the
solution is to work with the characters as 32-bit wide characters and
than convert it to a shorter representation when storing them in the
lookup tables. Now that can lead to an inefficiency. I could also use
16 bit wide characters however that may not be good enough to hold all
future versions of Unicode and therefore has the same problems.

   As a response to the space waste used by storing word lists in some
sort of wide format some one asked:

     Since hard drives are cheaper and cheaper, you could store a
     dictionary in a usable (uncompressed) form and use it directly
     with memory mapping. Then the efficiency would directly depend on
     the disk caching method, and only the used part of the
     dictionaries would really be loaded into memory. You would no more
     have to load plain dictionaries into main memory, you'll just want
     to compute some indexes (or something like that) after mapping.

   However, the fact of the matter is that most of the dictionary will
be read into memory anyway if it is available. If it is not available
than there would be a good deal of disk swaps. Making characters 32-bit
wide will increase the chance that there are more disk swaps.  So the
bottom line is that it is more efficient to convert characters from
something like UTF-8 into some sort of 8-bit character. I could also
use some sort of disk space lookup table such as the Berkeley Database.
However this will *definitely* degrade performance.

   The bottom line is that keeping Aspell 8-bit internally is a very
well though out decision that is not likely to change any time soon.
Feel free to challenge me on it, but, don't expect me to change my mind
unless you can bring up some point that I have not thought of before
and quite possibly a patch to solve cleanly convert Aspell to Unicode
internally without a serious performance lost OR serious memory usage
increase.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Languages Which Aspell can Support,  Next: Language Related Issues,  Prev: Implementation Notes,  Up: Top

Languages Which Aspell can Support
**********************************

Even though Aspell will remain 8-bit internally it should still be able
to support any written languages not based on a logographic script.
The only logographic writing system in current use are those based on
hànzi which includes Chinese, Japanese, and sometimes Korean.

* Menu:

* Supported::
* Unsupported::
* Multiple Scripts::
* Planned Dictionaries::
* References::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Supported,  Next: Unsupported,  Up: Languages Which Aspell can Support

Supported
=========

Aspell 0.60 should be able to support the following languages:

Code Language Name          Script                Dictionary     Gettext
                                                  Available      Translation

aa   Afar                   Latin                 -              -
af   Afrikaans              Latin                 0.50           -
ak   Akan                   Latin                 -              -
am   Amharic                Ethiopic              0.60           -
ar   Arabic                 Arabic                Planned        -
as   Assamese               Bengali               -              -
ast  Asturian / Bable       Latin                 Maybe          -
av   Avar                   Cyrillic              -              -
ay   Aymara                 Latin                 -              -
az   Azerbaijani            Latin                 0.60           -

ba   Bashkir                Cyrillic              -              -
ban  Balinese               Latin                 Maybe          -
be   Belarusian             Cyrillic              0.50           Incomplete
bem  Bemba                  Latin                 Maybe          -
bg   Bulgarian              Cyrillic              0.50           -
bh   Bihari                 Devanagari            -              -
bi   Bislama                Latin                 Maybe          -
bm   Bambara                Latin                 -              -
bn   Bengali                Bengali               0.60           -
bo   Tibetan                Tibetan               -              -
br   Breton                 Latin                 0.50           -
bs   Bosnian                Latin                 Maybe          -

ca   Catalan / Valencian    Latin                 0.50           -
ce   Chechen                Cyrillic              -              -
ceb  Cebuano                Latin                 Maybe          -
ch   Chamorro               Latin                 Maybe          -
chk  Chuukese               Latin                 Maybe          -
co   Corsican               Latin                 Maybe          -
cs   Czech                  Latin                 0.50           Yes
cv   Chuvash                Cyrillic              -              -
cy   Welsh                  Latin                 0.50           -

da   Danish                 Latin                 0.50           Incomplete
de   German                 Latin                 0.50           Yes

ee   Ewe                    Latin                 -              -
el   Greek                  Greek                 0.50           -
en   English                Latin                 0.50           Yes
eo   Esperanto              Latin                 0.50           -
es   Spanish                Latin                 0.50           Incomplete
et   Estonian               Latin                 0.60           -
eu   Basque                 Latin                 Maybe          -

fa   Persian                Arabic                0.60           -
ff   Fulah                  Latin                 -              -
fi   Finnish                Latin                 0.60           -
fj   Fijian                 Latin                 Maybe          -
fo   Faroese                Latin                 0.50           -
fr   French                 Latin                 0.50           Yes
fur  Friulian               Latin                 Maybe          -
fy   Frisian                Latin                 Maybe          -

ga   Irish                  Latin                 0.50           Yes
gd   Scottish Gaelic        Latin                 0.50           -
gl   Gallegan               Latin                 0.50           -
gn   Guarani                Latin                 Maybe          -
gu   Gujarati               Gujarati              Maybe          -
gv   Manx Gaelic            Latin                 0.50           -

ha   Hausa                  Latin                 Maybe          -
haw  Hawaiian               Latin                 Maybe          -
he   Hebrew                 Hebrew                0.60           -
hi   Hindi                  Devanagari            Maybe          -
hil  Hiligaynon             Latin                 Maybe          -
ho   Hiri Motu              Latin                 -              -
hr   Croatian               Latin                 0.50           -
hsb  Upper Sorbian          Latin                 0.60           -
ht   Haitian Creole         Latin                 Maybe          -
hu   Hungarian              Latin                 0.60           -
hy   Armenian               Armenian              -              -
hz   Herero                 Latin                 -              -

ia   Interlingua (IALA)     Latin                 0.50           -
iba  Iban                   Latin                 Maybe          -
id   Indonesian             Latin                 0.50           -
ig   Igbo                   Latin                 Maybe          -
ii   Sichuan Yi             Yi                    -              -
ilo  Iloko                  Latin                 Maybe          -
io   Ido                    Latin                 -              -
is   Icelandic              Latin                 0.50           -
it   Italian                Latin                 0.50           -

jv   Javanese               Javanese, Latin       Maybe          -

ka   Georgian               Georgian              -              -
kac  Kachin                 Latin                 Maybe          -
kg   Kongo                  Latin                 Maybe          -
kha  Khasi                  Bengali, Latin,       Maybe          -
                            Latin                                
ki   Kikuyu / Gikuyu        Latin                 -              -
kj   Kwanyama               Latin                 -              -
kk   Kazakh                 Cyrillic              -              -
kl   Kalaallisut /          Latin                 Maybe          -
     Greenlandic                                                 
kn   Kannada                Kannada               -              -
kok  Konkani                Latin                 Maybe          -
kr   Kanuri                 Latin                 -              -
ks   Kashmiri               Arabic                -              -
ku   Kurdish                Arabic, Cyrillic,     0.50           -
                            Latin                                
kv   Komi                   Cyrillic              -              -
kw   Cornish                Latin                 Maybe          -
ky   Kirghiz                Cyrillic              -              -

la   Latin                  Latin                 0.60           -
lb   Luxembourgish          Latin                 Maybe          -
lg   Ganda                  Latin                 Maybe          -
li   Limburgian             Latin                 Maybe          -
ln   Lingala                Latin                 Maybe          -
loz  Lozi                   Latin                 Maybe          -
lt   Lithuanian             Latin                 0.60           -
lu   Luba-Katanga           Latin                 -              -
luo  Luo (Kenya and         Latin                 Maybe          -
     Tanzania)                                                   
lv   Latvian                Latin                 0.60           -

mg   Malagasy               Latin                 0.50           -
mh   Marshallese            Latin                 Maybe          -
mi   Maori                  Latin                 0.50           -
min  Minangkabau            Latin                 Maybe          -
mk   Macedonian             Cyrillic              0.50           -
ml   Malayalam              Malayalam             Maybe          -
mn   Mongolian              Cyrillic              0.60           Yes
mo   Moldavian              Cyrillic              -              -
mr   Marathi                Devanagari            Maybe          -
ms   Malay                  Latin                 0.50           -
mt   Maltese                Latin                 0.50           -
my   Burmese                Myanmar               -              -

nb   Norwegian Bokmal       Latin                 0.50           -
nd   North Ndebele          Latin                 Maybe          -
nds  Low Saxon              Latin                 Maybe          -
ne   Nepali                 Devanagari            Maybe          -
ng   Ndonga                 Latin                 Maybe          -
niu  Niuean                 Latin                 Maybe          -
nl   Dutch                  Latin                 0.50           Yes
nn   Norwegian Nynorsk      Latin                 0.50           -
nr   South Ndebele          Latin                 -              -
nso  Northern Sotho         Latin                 Maybe          -
nv   Navajo                 Latin                 -              -
ny   Nyanja                 Latin                 0.50           -

oc   Occitan / Provencal    Latin                 Maybe          -
om   Oromo                  Latin                 -              -
or   Oriya                  Oriya                 -              -
os   Ossetic                Cyrillic              -              -

pa   Punjabi                Gurmukhi              -              -
pam  Pampanga               Latin                 Maybe          -
pap  Papiamento             Latin                 Maybe          -
pl   Polish                 Latin                 0.50           -
ps   Pushto                 Arabic                -              -
pt   Portuguese             Latin                 0.50           Incomplete

qu   Quechua                Latin                 0.60           -

rar  Rarotongan             Latin                 Maybe          -
rn   Rundi                  Latin                 Maybe          -
ro   Romanian               Latin                 0.50           Incomplete
ru   Russian                Cyrillic              0.50           Yes
rw   Kinyarwanda            Latin                 0.50           -

sc   Sardinian              Latin                 0.50           -
sd   Sindhi                 Arabic                -              -
se   Northern Sami          Latin                 Maybe          -
sg   Sango                  Latin                 Maybe          -
si   Sinhalese              Sinhala               -              -
sk   Slovak                 Latin                 0.50           -
sl   Slovenian              Latin                 0.50           -
sm   Samoan                 Latin                 Maybe          -
sn   Shona                  Latin                 Maybe          -
so   Somali                 Latin                 Maybe          -
sq   Albanian               Latin                 Maybe          -
sr   Serbian                Cyrillic, Latin       Maybe          Incomplete
ss   Swati                  Latin                 Maybe          -
st   Southern Sotho         Latin                 Maybe          -
su   Sundanese              Latin                 Maybe          -
sv   Swedish                Latin                 0.50           -
sw   Swahili                Latin                 0.50           -

ta   Tamil                  Tamil                 0.60           -
te   Telugu                 Telugu                Maybe          -
tet  Tetum                  Latin                 0.50           -
tg   Tajik                  Cyrillic              Maybe          Incomplete
ti   Tigrinya               Ethiopic              Maybe          -
tk   Turkmen                Latin                 Planned        -
tkl  Tokelau                Latin                 Maybe          -
tl   Tagalog                Latin                 0.50           -
tn   Tswana                 Latin                 0.50           -
to   Tonga                  Latin                 Maybe          -
tpi  Tok Pisin              Latin                 Maybe          -
tr   Turkish                Latin                 0.50           -
ts   Tsonga                 Latin                 Maybe          -
tt   Tatar                  Cyrillic              -              -
tw   Twi                    Latin                 -              -
ty   Tahitian               Latin                 Maybe          -

ug   Uighur                 Arabic                -              -
uk   Ukrainian              Cyrillic              0.50           Yes
ur   Urdu                   Arabic                Maybe          -
uz   Uzbek                  Cyrillic              0.60           -

ve   Venda                  Latin                 Maybe          -
vi   Vietnamese             Latin                 0.60           -

wa   Walloon                Latin                 0.50           Incomplete
wo   Wolof                  Latin                 Maybe          -

xh   Xhosa                  Latin                 Maybe          -

yi   Yiddish                Hebrew                0.60           -
yo   Yoruba                 Latin                 Maybe          -

za   Zhuang                 Latin                 -              -
zu   Zulu                   Latin                 0.50           -

   Dictionaries marked as "0.50" are available for Aspell 0.50.  Ones
marked as "0.60" are available for Aspell 0.60 only.  Ones marked as
"Planned" should eventually be available.  Ones marked as "Maybe" might
be available in the future.  *Note Planned Dictionaries::, for more
info.

Notes on Latin Languages
------------------------

Any word that can be written using one of the Latin ISO-8859 character
sets (ISO-8859-1,2,3,4,9,10,13,14,15,16) can be written, in decomposed
form, using the ASCII characters, the 23 additional letters:

     U+00C6 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AE
     U+00D0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH
     U+00D8 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH STROKE
     U+00DE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN
     U+00DE LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN
     U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S
     U+00E6 LATIN SMALL LETTER AE
     U+00F0 LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH
     U+00F8 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE
     U+0110 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE
     U+0111 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE
     U+0126 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H WITH STROKE
     U+0127 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH STROKE
     U+0131 LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I
     U+0138 LATIN SMALL LETTER KRA
     U+0141 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH STROKE
     U+0142 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE
     U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG
     U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG
     U+0152 LATIN CAPITAL LIGATURE OE
     U+0153 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE
     U+0166 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH STROKE
     U+0167 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH STROKE

   and the 14 modifiers:

     U+0300 COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT
     U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT
     U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
     U+0303 COMBINING TILDE
     U+0304 COMBINING MACRON
     U+0306 COMBINING BREVE
     U+0307 COMBINING DOT ABOVE
     U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS
     U+030A COMBINING RING ABOVE
     U+030B COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT
     U+030C COMBINING CARON
     U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW
     U+0327 COMBINING CEDILLA
     U+0328 COMBINING OGONEK

   Which is a total of 37 additional Unicode code points.

   All ISO-8859 character leaves the characters 0x00 - 0x1F, and 0x80 -
0x9F unmapped as they are generally used as control characters.  Of
those, 0x01 - 0x0F, 0x11 - 0x1F and 0x80 - 0x9F may be mapped to
anything in Aspell.  This is a total of 62 characters which can be
remapped in any ISO-8859 character set.  Thus, by remapping 37 of the 62
characters to the previously specified Unicode code-points, any modified
ISO-8859 character set can be used for any Latin languages covered by
ISO-8859.  Of course decomposing every single accented character wastes
a lot of space, so only characters that cannot be represented in the
precomposed form should be broken up.  By using this trick it is
possible to store foreign words in the correctly accented form in the
dictionary even if the precomposed character is not in the current
character set.

   Any letter in the Unicode range U+0000 - U+0249, U+1E00 - U+1EFF
(Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B,
and Latin Extended Additional) can be represented using around 175
basic letters, and 25 modifiers which is less than 210 and can thus fit
in an Aspell 8-bit character set.  Since this unicode range covers any
possible Latin language this special character set can be used to
represent any word written using the Latin script if so desired.

Syllabic
--------

Syllabic languages use a separate symbol for each syllable of the
language.  Even thought most of them have more than 210 distinct
symbols Aspell can still support them by breaking them up.

The Ethiopic Syllabary
......................

Even though the Ethiopic script has more than 210 distinct characters
Aspell can still handle it.  The idea is to split each character into
two parts based on the Consonant and Vowel parts.  This encoding of the
syllabary is far more useful to Aspell than if they were stored in UTF-8
or UTF-16.  In fact, the exiting suggestion strategy of Aspell will work
well with this encoding without any additional modifications.  However,
additional improvements may be possible by taking advantage of the
consonant-vowel structure of this encoding.

   In fact, the split consonant-vowel representation may prove to be so
useful that it may be beneficial to encode other syllabary in this
fashion, even if they are less than 210 of them.

   The code to break up a syllabary into the consonant-vowel part is
part of the Unicode normalization process.

The Yi Syllabary
................

A very large syllabary with 819 distinct symbols.  However, like
Ethiopic, it should be possible to support this script by breaking it
up.

The Ojibwe Syllabary
....................

With only 120 distinct symbols, Aspell can actually support this one as
is.  However, as previously mentioned, it may be beneficial to break it
up into the consonant-vowel representation anyway.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Unsupported,  Next: Multiple Scripts,  Prev: Supported,  Up: Languages Which Aspell can Support

Unsupported
===========

These languages, when written in the given script, are currently
unsupported by Aspell for one reason or another.

Code   Language Name   Script
ja     Japanese        Japanese
km     Khmer           Khmer
ko     Korean          Han, Hangul
lo     Lao             Lao
th     Thai            Thai
zh     Chinese         Han

The Thai, Khmer, and Lao Scripts
--------------------------------

The Thai, Khmer, and Lao scripts presents a different problem for
Aspell.  The problem is not that there are more than 210 unique symbols,
but that there are no spaces between words.  This means that there is no
easy way to split a sentence into individual words.  However, it is
still possible to spell check these scripts, it is just a lot more
difficult.  I will be happy to work with someone who is interested in
adding Thai, Khmer, or Lao support to Aspell, but it is not likely
something I will do on my own in the foreseeable future.

Languages which use Hànzi Characters
------------------------------------

Hànzi Characters are used to write Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and were
once used to write Vietnamese.  Each hànzi character represents a
syllable of a spoken word and also has a meaning.  Since there are
around 3,000 of them in common usage it is unlikely that Aspell will
ever be able to support spell checking languages written using hànzi
until full Unicode support is implemented.  However, I am not even sure
if these languages need spell checking since hànzi characters are
generally not entered in directly.  Furthermore even if Aspell could
spell check hànzi the existing suggestion strategy will not work well
at all, and thus a completely new strategy will need to be developed.
However, if it is the case that hànzi needs to be spell checked and you
know something about the issues involved please fell free to contact me.

Japanese
--------

Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of "hiragana", "katakana",
"kanji", and sometimes "romaji".  "Hiragana" and "katakana" are both
syllabaries unique to Japan, "kanji" is a modified form of hànzi, and
"romaji" uses the Latin alphabet.  With some work, Aspell should be
able to check the non-kanji part of Japanese text.  However, based on
my limited understanding of Japanese hiragana is often used at the end
of kanji.  Thus if Aspell was to simply separate out the hiragana from
kanji it would end up with a lot of word endings which are not proper
words and will thus be flagged as misspellings.  However, this can be
fairly easily rectified as text is tokenized into words before it is
converted into Aspell's internal encoding.  In fact, some Japanese text
is written in entirely in one script.  For example books for children
and foreigners are sometimes written entirely in hiragana.  Thus,
Aspell, in its current state, could prove at least somewhat useful for
spell checking Japanese.

Hangul
------

Korean is generally written in hangul or a mixture of han and hangul.
In Hangul letters individual letters, known as jamo, are grouped
together in syllable blocks.  Unicode allows Hangul to be stored in one
of three ways, (A) Individual jamo letters (Hangul Compatibility Jamo,
U+3130 - U+318F), (D) decomposed jamo (Hangul Jamo, U+1100 - U+11FF),
and (C) precoposed sylable blocks (Hangul Syllables, U+AC00 - U+D7AF).
In order for Aspell to work with Hangul it needs to be form A.
Unfortunately the existing Normalization code in Aspell will not be
able to adequately deal with converting Hangul from form D and C to
form A and back again.  However, once this code is written, Aspell
should be able to spell check Hangul with out any problem.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Multiple Scripts,  Next: Planned Dictionaries,  Prev: Unsupported,  Up: Languages Which Aspell can Support

Languages Written in Multiple Scripts
=====================================

Aspell should be able to check text written in the same language but in
multiple scripts with some work.  If the number of unique symbols in
both scripts is less than 210, then a special character set can be used
to allow both scripts to be encoded in the same dictionary.  However
this may not be the most efficient solution.  An alternate solution is
to store each script in its own dictionary and allow Aspell to choose
the correct dictionary based on which script the given word is written
in.  Aspell currently does not support this mode of spell checking but
it is something that I hope to eventually support.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Planned Dictionaries,  Next: References,  Prev: Multiple Scripts,  Up: Languages Which Aspell can Support

Notes on Planned Dictionaries
=============================

Kevin Patrick Scannell has word lists available for the following
languages based on his web crawling software
(`http://borel.slu.edu/crubadan/') but needs someone to proofread them:

   * Asturian (ast)

   * Bali (ban)

   * Bemba (bem)

   * Bislama (bi)

   * Cebuano (ceb)

   * Chamorro (ch)

   * Chuukese (chk)

   * Corsican (co)

   * Basque (eu)

   * Fijian (fj)

   * Friulian (fur)

   * Frisian (fy)

   * Guarani (gn)

   * Hausa (ha)

   * Hawaiian (haw)

   * Hiligaynon (hil)

   * Haitian Creole (ht)

   * Iban (iba)

   * Igbo (ig)

   * Ilocano (ilo)

   * Javanese (jv)

   * Jingpho (kac)

   * Kalaallisut (kl)

   * Konkani (kok)

   * Cornish (kw)

   * Luganda (lg)

   * Limburgish (li)

   * Lingala (ln)

   * Lozi (loz)

   * Luo (luo)

   * Marshallese (mh)

   * Minangkabau (min)

   * Ndebele (nd)

   * Low Saxon (nds)

   * Ndonga (ng)

   * Niue (niu)

   * Northern Sotho (nso)

   * Occitan (oc)

   * Pampangan (pam)

   * Papiamentu (pap)

   * Rundi (rn)

   * Northern Saami (se)

   * Samoan (sm)

   * Shona (sn)

   * Somali (so)

   * Swati (ss)

   * Southern Sotho (st)

   * Sunda (su)

   * Tajiki (tg)

   * Tokelauan (tkl)

   * Tongan (to)

   * Tok Pisin (tpi)

   * Tsonga (ts)

   * Tahitian (ty)

   * Venda (ve)

   * Wolof (wo)

   * Xhosa (xh)

   * Yoruba (yo)

If you are interested, please contact him at scannell at slu edu.

   A free spell checker for the Arabic (ar) languages called Duali can
be found at `http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=duali'.  It uses
its own form of affix compression.  This needs to be converted to
Aspell format.  The author, Mohammed Elzubeir, expressed an interest in
converting it but I have not heard from him in a while.  If you are
interested in helping with this conversion please let me know.

   An Ispell hash table has been discovered for Albanian (sq) at
`http://www.7kosova.com/kde-shqip/ispell/ispell.html'.  However, the
raw word list is not provided and the author has not been responding to
emails.  If you know how to disassemble a Ispell hash table or the
where-abouts of the word list used to create the hash table I would
appreciate hearing from you.

   A dictionary marked as "Planned" or "Maybe" but not listed in the
section means that someone has expressed an interest in creating one.
If you are interested in helping please contact me at <kevina@gnu.org>
so that I can put you in touch with them.


File: aspell.info,  Node: References,  Prev: Planned Dictionaries,  Up: Languages Which Aspell can Support

References
==========

The information in this chapter was gathered from numerous sources,
including:

   * ISO 639-2 Registration Authority,
     `http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/'

   * Languages and Scripts (Offical Unicode Site),
     `http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/languages-scripts.html'

   * Omniglot - a guide to written language, `http://www.omniglot.com/'

   * Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia, `http://wikipedia.org/'

   * Ethnologue - Languages of the World, `http://www.ethnologue.com/'

   * World Languages - The Ultimate Language Store,
     `http://www.worldlanguage.com/'

   * South African Languages Web, `http://www.languages.web.za/'

   * The Languages and Writing Systems of Africa (Global Advisor
     Newsletter), `http://www.intersolinc.com/newsletters/africa.htm'


   Special thanks goes to Era Eriksson for helping me with the
information in this chapter.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Language Related Issues,  Next: To Do,  Prev: Languages Which Aspell can Support,  Up: Top

Language Related Issues
***********************

Here are some language related issues that a good spell checker needs to
handle.  If you have any more information about any of these issues, or
of a new issue not discussed here, please email me at <kevina@gnu.org>.

* Menu:

* Compound Words::
* Words With Symbols in Them::
* Unicode Normalization::
* German Sharp S::
* Context Sensitive Spelling::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Compound Words,  Next: Words With Symbols in Them,  Up: Language Related Issues

Compound Words
==============

In some languages, such as German, it is acceptable to string two words
together, thus forming a compound word.  However, there are rules to
when this can be done.  Furthermore, it is not always sufficient to
simply concatenate the two words.  For example, sometimes a letter is
inserted between the two words.  Aspell currently has support for
unconditionally stringing words together.  I tried implementing more
sophisticated support for compound words in Aspell but it was too
limiting and no one used it.

   After receiving feedback from several people it seems that acceptable
support for compound words involved two basically independent parts.
If this is not sufficient for your language please let me know.

Part One
========

Describes how the word needs to be changed when forming a compound

     CMP <flag> <strip> <add> <cond> <cond2>
     
     <flag>  is the compound flag
     <strip> is the string to strip or 0 for the null string
     <add>   is the string to add or 0 for the null string
     <cond>  is the condition to match at the end of the current word
     <cond2> is the condition to match at the beginning of the next word

All but the last field are the same as a suffix entry in the exiting
affix code.

   <cond> is a simplified regular expression.  Some examples:
     . (for anything)
     e
     [^aeiou]y
     [^ey]
     [aeiou]y

   It does not seem necessary to change the beginning of a word when
forming compounds

Part Two
========

Describes the position a word can appear in (beginning, middle, or end)
and with which words.

   To do this each word can be assigned a category.  Then each category
can be given a set of rules to describe how it can be used in a
compound word for example

     A + B: indicates that category A may appear at the beginning of a
       word when followed by a category B word.  When combined it is then
       considered a category B word.
     A + C + B: here a C word may only appear between an A or B word
     A + A + B
     A + A
     A + A + A
     etc..

   I have not decided if a word should be allowed to belong to more than
one category as a new category can be created in necessary to mean
words in both category A and B for example.

To Implement
------------

To implement support for compound words based on the above description
the following will need to be done:

  1. expand the affix code to support special compound flags as
     described in part one

  2. write code to store the conditions as described in part two

  3. expand the compound checking code to check against the conditions

  4. expand the dictionary format to store the necessary compound info
     with the word


   I don't know when I will be able to actually implement this.  If you
would like to try please let me know.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Words With Symbols in Them,  Next: Unicode Normalization,  Prev: Compound Words,  Up: Language Related Issues

Words With Spaces or Other Symbols in Them
==========================================

Many languages, including English, have words with non-letter symbols in
them.  For example the apostrophe.  These symbols generally appear in
the middle of a word, but they can also appear at the end, such as in an
abbreviation.  If a symbol can _only_ appear as part of a word then
Aspell can treat it as if it were a letter.

   However, the problem is most of these symbols have other uses.  For
example, the apostrophe is often used as a single quote and the
abbreviations marker is also used as a period.  Thus, Aspell cannot
blindly treat them as if they were letters.

   Aspell currently handles the case where the symbol can only appear in
the middle of the word fairly well.  It simply assumes that if there is
a letter both before and after the symbol than it is part of the word.
This works most of the time but it is not fool proof.  For example,
suppose the user forgot to leave a space after the period:

       ... and the dog went up the tree.Then the cat ...

Aspell would think "tree.Then" is one word.  A better solution might be
to then try to check "tree" and "Then" separately.  But what if one of
them is not in the dictionary?  Should Aspell assume "tree.Then" is one
word?

   The case where the symbol can appear at the beginning or end of the
word is more difficult to deal with.  The symbol may or may not
actually be part of the word.  Aspell currently handles this case by
first trying to spell check the word with the symbol and if that fails,
try it without.  The problem is, if the word is misspelled, should
Aspell assume the symbol belongs with the word or not?  Currently
Aspell assumes it does, which is not always the correct thing to do.

   Numbers in words present a different challenge to Aspell.  If Aspell
treats numbers as letters than every possible number a user might write
in a document must be specified in the dictionary.  This could easily
be solved by having special code to assume all numbers are correctly
spelled.  Yet, what about something like "4th".  Since the "th" suffix
can appear after any number we are left with the same problem.  The
solution would be to have a special symbol for "any number".

   Words with spaces in them, such as foreign phrases, are even more
trouble to deal with.  The basic problem is that when tokenizing a
string there is no good way to keep phrases together. One solution is to
use trial and error.  If a word is not in the dictionary try grouping it
with the previous or next word and see if the combined word is in the
dictionary.  But what if the combined word is not, should the misspelled
word be grouped when looking for suggestions?  One solution is to also
store each part of the phrase in the dictionary, but tag it as part of a
phrase and not an independent word.

   To further complicate things, most applications that use spell
checkers are accustom to parsing the document themselves and sending it
to the spell checker a word at a time.  In order to support words with
spaces in them a more complicated interface will be required.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Unicode Normalization,  Next: German Sharp S,  Prev: Words With Symbols in Them,  Up: Language Related Issues

Unicode Normalization
=====================

Because Unicode contains a large number of precomposed characters there
are multiple ways a character can be represented.  For example letter ö
can either be represented as

     U+00F6 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS
or
     U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER O + U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS

   By performing normalization first, Aspell will only see one of these
representations.  The exact form of normalization depends on the
language.  Give the choice of:

  1. Precomposed character

  2. Base letter + combining character(s)

  3. Base letter only

if the precomposed character is in the target character set, then (1),
if both base and combining character is present, then (2), otherwise
(3).

   Unicode Normalization is now implemented in Aspell 0.60.


File: aspell.info,  Node: German Sharp S,  Next: Context Sensitive Spelling,  Prev: Unicode Normalization,  Up: Language Related Issues

German Sharp S
==============

The German Sharp S or Eszett does not have an uppercase equivalent.
Instead when `ß' is converted to `SS'.  The conversion of `ß' to `SS'
requires a special rule, and increases the length of a word, thus
disallowing inplace case conversion.  Furthermore, my general rule of
converting all words to lowercase before looking them up in the
dictionary won't work because the conversion of `SS' to lowercase is
ambiguous; it can be `ss' or `ß'.  I do plan on dealing with this
eventually.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Context Sensitive Spelling,  Prev: German Sharp S,  Up: Language Related Issues

Context Sensitive Spelling
==========================

In some language, such as Luxembourgish, the spelling of a word depends
on which words surround it.  For example the the letter `n' at the end
of a word will disappear if it is followed by another word starting
with a certain letter such as an `s'.  However, it can probably get
more complicated than that.  I would like to know how complicated before
I attempt to implement support for context sensitive spelling.


File: aspell.info,  Node: To Do,  Next: Installing,  Prev: Language Related Issues,  Up: Top

To Do
*****

* Menu:

* Important Items::
* Other Items::
* Notes on Various Items::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Important Items,  Next: Other Items,  Up: To Do

Important Items
===============

Words in bold indicate how you should refer to the item when discussing
it with me or others.

Things that need to be done
---------------------------

These items need to be done before I consider Aspell finished. If you
are interested in helping me with one of these tasks please email me.
Good C++ skills are needed for most of these tasks involving coding.

   * Create a generic filter to handle multi-character letters such as
     `"a' or `\"a' for ä.  This filter should make use of the already
     exiting normalization code if possible.

   * Make Aspell *Thread safe*. Even though Aspell itself is not
     multi-threaded I would like it to be thread safe so that it can be
     used by multi-threaded programs. There are several areas of Aspell
     that that are potently thread unsafe (such as accessing a global
     pool) and several classes which have the potential of being used
     by more than one thread (such as the personal dictionary). _[In
     Progress]_.

   * Enhance *ispell.el* so that it will work better with GNU Aspell.
     _[In Progress]_.

   * Clean up copyright notices and bring the Aspell package up to *GNU
     Standards*. _[In Progress]_.

Things I would like to get done
-------------------------------

I would like to get these done. However, I may still consider Aspell
finished without. They will probably eventually get implemented.
However, I could still use help with them.

   * Better support for *compound words*. The support for _conditional_
     compound words found in Aspell versions 0.50 and earlier is no
     longer available since no one seems to be using it. Support for
     _unconditional_ compound words is still available. *Note Compound
     Words::.

   * Be able to accept *words with spaces in them* as many languages
     have words, such as a word in a foreign phrase, which only makes
     sense when followed by other words. *Note Words With Symbols in
     Them::.

   * Reorganize manual to make it easier to understand and to make it
     possible to break out useful man pages.

   * Support *soundslike lookup with affix compression*.  I think it is
     possible, although I don't know how effective it will be.  The
     basic idea is to affix compress the soundslike codes and then
     match the codes up with affix compressed words.  If you are
     interested, email <aspell-devel@gnu.org>, and I will explain it in
     more detail.

   * Use Lawrence Philips' new *Double Metaphone algorithm*. See
     `http://aspell.net/metaphone/'. The main task involved here is
     converting the algorithm into table form. This will take some time
     but there is no real programming experience required. If you want
     to help with Aspell but don't have any real programming experience,
     this would be a great place to start.

   * Rank suggestions based on *frequency information*.  Both global
     frequency and document specific frequency can be used.  The latter
     will require that the whole document be made available to the
     spell checker.  Also use frequency information to flag words which
     are found in the dictionary but not in common usage, and thus
     might not be what was intended.

   * Support a *"dual-script" mode* where Aspell can use a separate
     dictionary depending on which script it detects the current word
     in, the two dictionaries can have nothing in common, ie an English
     one and a Russian one for example.  This will _not_ support two
     languages that use the same script as that is a lot more
     complicated.  For example if the word is misspelled which
     dictionary should it use for the suggestions?

   * Write a *GUI* for the Aspell utility. Ideally it should be able to
     do everything the Aspell utility can do and not just be able spell
     check a document.

   * Develop a *more powerfull C API* for Aspell.  Ideally this API
     should allow one to perform all the tasks the Aspell utility can
     do.  This included the ability to check whole documents, and create
     dictionaries, among other things.

   * Create a *C++ interface* for Aspell, possibly on top of the C one.



File: aspell.info,  Node: Other Items,  Next: Notes on Various Items,  Prev: Important Items,  Up: To Do

Other Items
===========

These items all sound like good ideas however I am not sure when I will
get to implementing them if ever.  Words in bold indicate how you
should refer to the item when discussing it with me or others.

   * Come up with a plug-in for `gEdit' the gnome text editor.

   * Change languages (and thus dictionaries) based on the information
     in the actual document.

   * Come up with a mode that will skip words based on the symbols that
     (almost) always surround the word.  *Note Word skipping by
     context::.

   * Create two *server modes* for Aspell.  One that uses the DICT
     protocol and one that uses `ispell -a' method of communication via
     some arbitrary port.

   * Come up with *thread safe personal dictionaries*.

   * Use the *Hidden Markov Model* to base the suggestions on not only
     the word itself but on the context around the word. *Note Hidden
     Markov Model::.

   * Having a way to *email the personal dictionary* and/or replacement
     list to a particular address either periodically or when it grows
     to a certain size. *Note Email the Personal Dictionary::.

   The following good ideas were found in the ispell `WISHES' file so I
thought I would pass them on.

   * Ispell should be smart enough to ignore hyphenation signs, such as
     the TeX `\-' hyphenation indicator.

   * (Jeff Edmonds) The personal dictionary should be able to remove
     certain words from the master dictionary, so that obscure words
     like "wether" wouldn't mask favorite typos.

   * (Jeff Edmonds) It would be wonderful if Ispell could correct
     inserted spaces such as "th e" for "the" or even "can not" for
     "cannot".

   * Since Ispell has dictionaries available to it, it is conceivable
     that it could automatically determine the language of a particular
     file by choosing the dictionary that produced the fewest spelling
     errors on the first few lines.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Notes on Various Items,  Prev: Other Items,  Up: To Do

Notes on Various Items
======================

* Menu:

* Word skipping by context::
* Hidden Markov Model::
* Email the Personal Dictionary::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Word skipping by context,  Next: Hidden Markov Model,  Up: Notes on Various Items

Word skipping by context
------------------------

This was posted on the Aspell mailing list on January 1, 1999:

   I had an idea on a great general way to determine if a word should be
skipped.  Determine the words to skip based on the symbols that
(almost) always surround the word.

   For example when asked to check the following C++ code:
     cout << "My age is: " << num << endl;
     cout << "Next year I will be " << num + 1 << endl;

   `cout', `num', and `endl' will all be skipped.  `cout' will be
skipped because it is always preceded by a `<<'.  `num' will be skipped
because it is always preceded by a `<<'.  And `endl' will be skipped
because it is always between a `<<' and a `;'.

   Given the following HTML code.
     <table width=50% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=1>
     <tr><td>One<td>Two<td>Three
     <tr><td>1<td>2<td>3
     </table>
     
     <table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=1>
     </table>

   `table', `width' `cellspacing', `cellpadding', `tr', `td' will all
be skipped because they are always enclosed in `<>'.  Now of course
`table' and `width' would be marked as correct anyway however there is
no harm in skipping them.

   So I was wondering if anyone on this list has any experience in
writing this sort of context recognition code or could give me some
pointers in the right direction.

   This sort of word skipping will be very powerful if done right.  I
imagine that it could replace specific spell checker modes for TeX,
Nroff, SGML etc because it will automatically be able to figure out
where it should skip words.  It could also probably do a very good job
on programming languages code.

   If you are interested in helping me out with this or just have
general comments about the idea please let me know.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Hidden Markov Model,  Next: Email the Personal Dictionary,  Prev: Word skipping by context,  Up: Notes on Various Items

Hidden Markov Model
-------------------

Knud Haugaard S/orensen suggested this one.  From his email on the
Aspell mailing list:

   consider these examples:

     a fone number.
      -> a phone number.
     
     a fone dress.
      -> a fine dress.

   the example illustrates that the right correction might depend on the
context of the word.

   So I suggested that you take a look on HMM to solve this problem.

   This might also provide a good base to include grammar correction in
Aspell.

   see this link `http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/HLTsurvey/ch1node7.html'.

   I think it is a great idea.   However unfortunately it will probably
be very complicated to implement.   Perhaps in the far future.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Email the Personal Dictionary,  Prev: Hidden Markov Model,  Up: Notes on Various Items

Email the Personal Dictionary
-----------------------------

Someone suggested in a personal email:

     Have you thought of adding a function to Aspell, that - when the
     personal dictionary has grown significantly - sends the user's
     personal dictionary to the maintainer of the corresponding Aspell
     dictionary? (if the user allows it)

     It would be a very useful service to the dictionary maintainers,
     and I think most users can see their benefit in it too.

   And I replied:

     Yes I have considered something like that but not for the personal
     dictionaries but rather the replacement word list in order to get
     better test data for `http://aspell.sourceforge.net/test/'.

   The problem is I don't know of a good way to do this since Aspell can
also be used as a library.  It also is not a real high priority,
especially since I would first need to learn how to send email within a
C++ program.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Installing,  Next: ChangeLog,  Prev: To Do,  Up: Top

Installing
**********

Aspell requires gcc 2.95 (or better) as the C++ compiler.  Other C++
compilers should work with some effort.  Other C++ compilers for mostly
POSIX compliant (Unix, Linux, BeOS, Cygwin) systems should work without
any major problems provided that the compile can handle all of the
advanced C++ features Aspell uses.  C++ compilers for non-Unix systems
might work but it will take some work.  Aspell at very least requires a
Unix-like environment (`sh', `grep', `sed', `tr', ...), and Perl in
order to build.  Aspell also uses a few POSIX functions when necessary.

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

* Menu:

* Generic Install Instructions::
* Curses Notes::
* Loadable Filter Notes::
* Upgrading from Aspell 0.50::
* Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12::
* Upgrading from a Pre-0.50 snapshot::
* WIN32 Notes::


File: aspell.info,  Node: Generic Install Instructions,  Next: Curses Notes,  Up: Installing

Generic Install Instructions
============================

     ./configure && make

   For additional `configure' options type `./configure --help'.  You
can control what C++ compiler is used by setting the environment
variable `CXX' before running configure and you can control what flags
are passed to the C++ compile via the environment variable `CXXFLAGS'.
Static libraries are disabled by default since static libraries will
not work right due to the mixing of C and C++.  When a C program links
with the static libraries in Aspell it is likely to crash because
Aspell's C++ objects are not getting initialized correctly.  However,
if for some reason you want them, you can enable them via
`--enable-static'.

   Aspell should then compile without any additional user intervention.
If you run into problems please first check the sections below as that
might solve your problem.

   To install the program simply type

     make install

   After Aspell is installed at least one dictionary needs to be
installed.  You can find them at `http://aspell.net/'.  The `aspell'
program must be in your path in order for the dictionaries to install
correctly.

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


File: aspell.info,  Node: Curses Notes,  Next: Loadable Filter Notes,  Prev: Generic Install Instructions,  Up: Installing

Curses Notes
============

If you are having problems compiling `check_funs.cpp' then the most
likely reason is due to incompatibilities with the curses
implementation on your system.  You should first try disabling the
"wide" curses library by with the `--disable-wide-curses' configure
option..  By doing so you will lose support for properly displaying
UTF-8 characters but you may still be able to get the full screen
interface.  If this fails than you can disable curses support
altogether with the `--disable-curses' configure option.  By doing this
you will lose the nice full screen interface but hopefully you will be
able to at least get Aspell to compile correctly.

   If the curses library is installed in a non-standard location than
you can specify the library and include directory with
`--enable-curses=LIB' and `--enable-curses-include=DIR'.

   `LIB' can either be the complete path of the library--for example
     /usr/local/curses/libcurses.a
   or the name of the library (for example `ncurses') or a combined
location and library in the form `-LLIBDIR -lLIB' (for example
`-L/usr/local/ncurses/lib -lncurses').

   DIR is the location of the curses header files (for example
`/usr/local/ncurses/include').

Unicode Support
---------------

In order for Aspell to correctly spell check UTF-8 documents the "wide"
version of the curses library must be installed.  This is different from
the normal version of curses library, and is normally named
`libcursesw' (with a `w' at the end) or `libncursesw'.  UTF-8 documents
will not display correctly without the right curses version installed.

   In addition your system must also support the `mblen' function.
Although this function was defined in the ISO C89 standard (ANSI
X3.159-1989), not all systems have it.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Loadable Filter Notes,  Next: Upgrading from Aspell 0.50,  Prev: Curses Notes,  Up: Installing

Loadable Filter Notes
=====================

Support for being able to load additional filter modules at run-time
has only been verified to work on Linux platforms.  If you get linker
errors when trying to use a filter, then it is likely that loadable
filter support is not working yet on your platform.  Thus, in order to
get Aspell to work correctly you will need to avoid compiling the
filters as individual modules by using the
`--disable-compile-in-filters' when configuring Aspell with
`./configure'.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Upgrading from Aspell 0.50,  Next: Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12,  Prev: Loadable Filter Notes,  Up: Installing

Upgrading from Aspell 0.50
==========================

The dictionary format has changed so dictionaries will need to be
recompiled.

   All data, by default, is now included in `LIBDIR/aspell-0.60' so
that multiple versions of Aspell can more peacefully coexist.  This
included both the dictionaries and the language data files which were
stored in `SHAREDIR/aspell' before Aspell 0.60.

   The format of the character data files has changed.  The new
character data files are installed with Aspell so you should not have
to worry about it unless you made a custom one.

   The dictionary option `strip-accents' has been removed.  For this
reason the old English dictionary (up to 0.51) will no longer work.  A
new English dictionary is now available which avoids using this option.
In addition the `ignore-accents' option is currently unimplemented.

Binary Compatibility
--------------------

The Aspell 0.60 library is binary compatible with the Aspell 0.50
library.  For this reason I chose _not_ to increment the major version
number (so-name) of the shared library by default which means programs
that were compiled for Aspell 0.50 will also work for Aspell 0.60.
However, this means that having both Aspell 0.50 and Aspell 0.60
installed at the same time can be pragmatic.  If you wish to allow both
Aspell 0.50 and 0.60 to be installed at the same time then you can use
the configure option `--incremented-soname' which will increment
so-name.  You should only use this option if you know what you are
doing.  It is up to you to somehow ensure that both the Aspell 0.50 and
0.60 executables can coexist.

   If after incrementing the so-name you wish to allow programs compiled
for Aspell 0.50 to use Aspell 0.60 instead (thus implying that Aspell
0.50 is not installed) then you can use a special compatibility library
which can be found in the `lib5' directory.  This directory will not be
entered when building or installing Aspell so you must manually build
and install this library.  You should build it after the rest of Aspell
is built.  The order in which this library is installed, with relation
to the rest of Aspell, is also important.  If it is installed _after_
the rest of Aspell then new programs will link to the old library
(which will work for Aspell 0.50 or 0.60) when built, if installed
_before_, new programs will link with the new library (Aspell 0.60
only).


File: aspell.info,  Node: Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12,  Next: Upgrading from a Pre-0.50 snapshot,  Prev: Upgrading from Aspell 0.50,  Up: Installing

Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12
====================================

Aspell has undergone an extremely large number of changes since the
previous Aspell/Pspell release.  For one thing Pspell has been merged
with Aspell so there in no longer two separate libraries you have to
worry about.

   Because of the massive changes between Aspell/Pspell and Aspell 0.50
you may want to clean out the old files before installing the the new
Aspell.  To do so do a `make uninstall' in the original Aspell and
Pspell source directories.

   The way dictionaries are handled has also changed.  This includes a
change in the naming conventions of both language names and
dictionaries.  Due to the language name change, your old personal
dictionaries will not be recognized.  However, you can import the old
dictionaries by running the `aspell-import' script.  This also means
that dictionaries designed to work with older versions of Aspell are
not likely to function correctly.  Fortunately new dictionary packages
are available for most languages.  You can find them off of the Aspell
home page at `http://aspell.net'.

   The Pspell ABI is now part of Aspell except that the name of
everything has changed due to the renaming of Pspell to Aspell.  In
particular please note the following name changes:

     pspell -> aspell
     manager -> speller
     emulation -> enumeration
     master_word_list -> main_word_list

   Please also note that the name of the `language-tag' option has
changed to `lang'.  However, for backward compatibility the
`language-tag' option will still work.

   However, you should also be able to build applications that require
Pspell with the new Aspell as a backward compatibility header file is
provided.

   Due to a change in the way dictionaries are handled, scanning for
`.pwli' files in order to find out which dictionaries are available
will no longer work.  This means that programs that relied on this
technique may have problems finding dictionaries.  Fortunately, GNU
Aspell now provided a uniform way to list all installed dictionaries
via the c API.  See the file `list-dicts.c' in the `examples/'
directory for an example of how to do this.  Unfortunately there isn't
any simple way to find out which dictionaries are installed which will
work with both the old Aspell/Pspell and the new GNU Aspell.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Upgrading from a Pre-0.50 snapshot,  Next: WIN32 Notes,  Prev: Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12,  Up: Installing

Upgrading from a Pre-0.50 snapshot
==================================

At the last minute I decided to merge the `speller-util' program into
the main `aspell' program.  You may wish to remove that `speller-util'
program to avoid confusion.  This also means that dictionaries designed
to work with the snapshot will no longer work with the official release.


File: aspell.info,  Node: WIN32 Notes,  Prev: Upgrading from a Pre-0.50 snapshot,  Up: Installing

WIN32 Notes
===========

Getting the WIN32 version
-------------------------

The latest version of the native Aspell/WIN32 port, including binaries,
can be found at `http://aspell.net/win32'.  This page has,
unfortunately, not been updated for Aspell 0.60.  If you are interested
in updated the native port please let me know.

Building the WIN32 version
--------------------------

There are two basically different ways of building Aspell using GCC for
WIN32: You can either use the Cygwin compiler, which will produce
binaries that depend on the POSIX layer in `cygwin1.dll'.  The other
way is using MinGW GCC, those binaries use the native C runtime from
Microsoft (MSVCRT.DLL).

Building Aspell using Cygwin
............................

This works exactly like on other POSIX compatible systems using the
`./configure && make && make install' cycle.  Some versions of Cygwin
GCC will fail to link, this is caused by an incorrect `libstdc++.la' in
the `/lib' directory.  After removing or renaming this file, the build
progress should work (GCC-2.95 and GCC-3.x should work).

Building Aspell using MinGW
...........................

There are several different ways to build Aspell using MinGW.  The
easiest way is to use a Cygwin compiler but instruct it to build a
native binary rather than a Cygwin one.  To do this configure with:

     ./configure CFLAGS='-O2 -mno-cygswin' CXXFLAGS='-O2 -mno-cygswin'

   You may also want to add the option `--enable-win32-relocatable' to
use more windows friendly directories.  *Note Win32-Directories::.  In
this case configure with:

     ./configure CFLAGS='-O2 -mno-cygswin' CXXFLAGS='-O2 -mno-cygswin' --enable-win32-relocatable

   It should also be possible to build Aspell using the MSYS
environment.  But this has not been very well tested.  If building with
MSYS _do not_ add `CFLAGS ...' to configure.

Building Aspell without using Cygwin or MSYS
............................................

It is also possible to build Aspell without Cygwin of MinGW by using
the files in the `win32/' subdirectory.  However, these files have not
been updated to work with Aspell 0.60.  Thus the following instructions
will not work without some effort.  If you do get Aspell to compile
this way please send me the updated files so that I can include them
with the next release.

   To compile Aspell with the MinGW compiler, you will need at least
GCC-3.2 (as shipped with MinGW-2.0.3) and some GNU tools like `rm' and
`cp'.  The origin of those tools doesn't matter, it has shown to work
with any tools from MinGW/MSys, Cygwin or Linux.  To build Aspell, move
into the `win32' subdirectory and type `make'.  You can enable some
additional build options by either commenting out the definitions at
the head of the Makefile or passing those values as environment
variables or at the `make' command line.  Following options are
supported:

`DEBUGVERSION'
     If set to "1", the binaries will include debugging information
     (resulting in a much bigger size).

`CURSESDIR'
     Enter the path to the pdcurses library here, in order to get a
     nicer console interface (see below).

`MSVCLIB'
     Enter the filename of MS `lib.exe' here, if you want to build
     libraries that can be imported from MS Visual C++.

`WIN32_RELOCATABLE'
     If set to "1", Aspell will detect the prefix from the path where
     the DLL resides (see below for further details).

`TARGET'
     Sets a prefix to be used for cross compilation (e.g.
     `/usr/local/bin/i586-mingw32msvc-' to cross compile from Linux).

   There are also a MinGW compilers available for Cygwin and Linux, both
versions are able to compile Aspell using the prebuilt `Makefile'.
While the Cygwin port automatically detects the correct compiler, the
Linux version depends on setting the `TARGET' variable in the
`Makefile' (or environment) to the correct compiler prefix.

   Other compilers may work.  There is a patch for MS Visual C++ 6.0
available at `ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell', but it needs a lot of
changes to the Aspell sources.  It has also been reported that the
Intel C++ compiler can be used for compilation.

(PD)Curses
----------

In order to get the nice full screen interface when spell checking
files, a curses implementation that does not require Cygwin is
required.  The PDCurses (`http://pdcurses.sourceforge.net')
implementation is known to work, other implementations may work however
they have not been tested.  See the previous section for information on
specifying the location of the curses library and include file.

   Curses notes:

   * PDcurses built with MinGW needs to be compiled with
     `-DPDC_STATIC_BUILD' to avoid duplicate declaration of `DllMain'
     when compiling `aspell.exe'.

   * The curses enabled version can cause trouble in some shells (MSys
     `rxvt', `emacs') and will produce errors like `initscr() LINES=1
     COLS=1: too small'.  Use a non-curses version for those purposes.

Directories
-----------

If Aspell is configured with `--enable-win32-relocatable' or compiled
with `WIN32_RELOCATABLE=1' when using a Makefile, it can be run from
any directory: it will set `PREFIX' according to its install location
(assuming it resides in `PREFIX\\bin').  Your personal wordlists will
be saved in the `PREFIX' directory with their names changed from
`.aspell.LANG.*' to `LANG.*' (you can override the path by setting the
`HOME' environment variable).

Installer
---------

The installer registers the DLLs as shared libraries, you should
increase the reference counter to avoid the libraries being uninstalled
if your application still depends on them (and decrease it again when
uninstalling your program).  The reference counters are located under:
     HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs

   The install location and version numbers are stored under

     HKLM\SOFTWARE\Aspell

WIN32 consoles
--------------

The console uses a different encoding than GUI applications, changing
this to to a Windows encoding (e.g.  1252) is not supported on
Win9x/Me.  On WinNT (and later) those codepages can be set by first
changing the console font to `lucida console', then changing the
codepage using `chcp 1252'.

   Some alternative shells (e.g. MSys' `rxvt' or Cygwin's `bash') do a
codepage conversion (if correctly set up), so running Aspell inside
those shells might be a workaround for Win9x.


File: aspell.info,  Node: ChangeLog,  Next: Authors,  Prev: Installing,  Up: Top

ChangeLog
*********

Changes from 0.60.1 to 0.60.2 (December 18, 2004)
=================================================

   * Added the `munch-list' command to the aspell utility.  The `munch'
     program in the `myspell/' directory will disappear in Aspell 0.61.
     The `munchlist' script will also likely disappear or be replaced
     when Aspell 0.61 is released since it doesn't work correctly
     anyway.

   * Several important bug fixes some of which rendered some non-English
     languages unusable.

   * Other minor changes.

Changes from 0.60.1 to 0.60.1.1 (November 20, 2004)
===================================================

   * Fix bug involving checking of capitalized word when affix
     compression is used.

   * Compile fixes.

   * Added an option to disable using the "wide" curses version in case
     it causes compile problems.

   * Minor manual updates

   * Avoided including some unnecessary files in the distribution.

Changes from 0.60 to 0.60.1 (November 7, 2004)
==============================================

   * Lots of compile fixes for various platforms.

   * Miscellaneous bug fixes.

   * Added Nroff filter thanks to Sergey Poznyakoff.

   * The default filter mode when in pipe mode is now nroff for
     compatibility with Ispell.

   * Added Texinfo filter.

   * Added a section detailing the differences between Ispell and
     Aspell.

   * Updated the section on thread safety.

   * Other miscellaneous manual changes such as updating the To Do and
     Authors section.

Changes from 0.50.5 to 0.60 (August 27, 2004)
=============================================

   * Added support for Affix Compression.  Affix compression stores the
     root word and then a list of prefixes and suffixes that the word
     can take, and thus saves a lot of space.  The codebase comes from
     MySpell found in OpenOffice.  It uses the same affix file that
     OpenOffice (and Mozilla) use.  Affix compression will even work
     with soundslike lookup to a limited extent.

   * Added support for accepting all input and printing all output in
     UTF-8 or some other encoding different from the one Aspell uses.
     This includes support for Unicode normalization.  Aspell can now
     support any language with no more than 210 distinct characters,
     including different capitalizations and accents, _even if_ there
     is not an existing 8-bit encoding that supports the language.

   * Added support for loadable filters and customizable filter modes
     thanks to Christoph Hintermüller.

   * Enhanced SGML filter to also support skipping sgml tags such as
     "script" blocks thanks to Tom Snyder.

   * Added gettext support thanks to Sergey Poznyakoff

   * Reworked the compiled dictionary format.  Compiled dictionaries
     now take up less space (less than 80% for the English language) and
     creating them is significantly faster (over 4 times for the
     English language).

   * Reworked suggestion code.  It is significantly faster when dealing
     with short words (up to 10 times).  Also added support for MySpell
     Replacement Tables and n-gram lookup.  In addition, added basic
     support for compound words.

   * Manual has has been converted to texinfo format thanks to the work
     of Chris Martin.

   * Reworked the build system so that a single Makefile is used for
     most of the code.

   * All data, by default, is now included in `LIBDIR/aspell-0.60'.
     Also added a built time option to increment the major version
     number of the shared library.  This should allow both Aspell
     version 0.50 and 0.60 to coexist.  The major version number is
     _not_ incremented by default as Aspell 0.60 is binary compatible
     with Aspell 0.50.  *Note Binary Compatibility::.

   * The code to handle dictionaries has been rewritten.  Because of
     this support for the dictionary option `strip-accents' has been
     removed.  In addition the `ignore-accents' option is currently
     unimplemented.

   * Lots of other minor changes due to massive overhaul of the source
     code.


Changes from 0.50.4.1 to 0.50.5 (Feb 10, 2004)
==============================================

   * Reworked url filter which fixed several bugs and now accepts
     "bla.bla/kdkdl" as a url.

   * Fixed bug in which the url filter was coming before all other
     filters when it was suppose to come after. This solved a number of
     problems where the url filter was interfering with other filters.

   * Small bug fix in SGML filter.

   * Added code page charsets, ie cp125?.dat.

   * Added natural (split) keyboard data file as "split.kbd"

   * Compile fixes for the upcoming Gcc 3.4

   * Removed Solaris link hack as it was causing more problems than it
     fixes.

   * Compile fixes for Sun WorkShop 6 compiler, but there may still be
     some problems, especially with linking.

   * Included patch to help compile with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.

   * Minor manual fixes.

   * Updated the TODO section to reflect the current progress with the
     next major version of Aspell (0.51).

   * Updated to Autoconf 2.59, Automake 1.82, and Libtool 1.5.2.

Changes from 0.50.4 to 0.50.4.1 (Oct 11, 2003)
==============================================

   * Fixed major bug in pipe mode which caused the last character to be
     chopped off words before they were stored.

   * Minor formating fixes in the manual.

Changes from 0.50.3 to 0.50.4 (Sep 26, 2003)
============================================

   * Minor changes in URL filter to avoid treating the double quote
     character as part of the URL, and to avoid treating words ending in
     more than one period as a URL.

   * Document fixes in Aspell API

   * Small compile fixes, including one for GCC 3.3

   * Updated Win32 section since a port now exists thanks to Thorsten
     Maerz.

   * Complain instead of doing nothing or aborting for unimplemented
     functions in Aspell utility.

   * Portability bug fixes.

   * Upgraded to Autoconf 2.57, Automake 1.7.7, Libtool 1.5 (no longer
     use CVS version  of libtool).

Changes from 0.50.2 to 0.50.3 (Nov 23, 2002)
============================================

   * Hopefully fixed the ispell alignment error problem when Aspell is
     used with ispell.el.

   * Fixed a problem with personal dictionaries on NFS mounted home
     directories.

   * Compiled libaspell-common directory into libaspell for now to avoid
     forcing applications to relink whenever a new Aspell version is out
     which was due to the use of the libtool '-release' flag.

   * Fixed Makefiles so that Aspell can be built outside the source tree
     (i.e.  with VPATH).

   * Updated the section on compiling with Win32.

   * Updated to Autoconf 2.56.

Changes from 0.50.1 to 0.50.2 (Sep 28, 2002)
============================================

   * Fixed a number of bugs in ispell compatibility mode

   * Fixed a number of bugs with the handling of replacement pairs

   * Other miscellaneous bug fixes

   * Additional Win32 portability fixes

   * Added the Ukrainian KOI8-U charset.

Changes from 0.50 to 0.50.1 (Aug 28, 2002)
==========================================

   * A rather large number of portability fixes for non GNU/Linux
     platforms.

   * Fixed pkglibdir and pkgdatadir in configure.

   * Reintroduced some configure options from Aspell .33.7 included
     dict-dir, data-dir, curses, curses-include, win32-relocatable.

   * Fixed Aspell so it will now compile with -O3 when using gcc.

   * Updated note on Win32 support.

   * Other minor manual improvements.

   * Portability fixes in dictionary files

   * Official dictionary package for the Slovak language.

Changes from .33.7.1 to 0.50 (Aug 23, 2002)
===========================================

   * A complete overhaul of the source code which included merging
     Pspell into Aspell.

   * Changed the way dictionaries and languages are handled.

   * Added Dvorak keymap.

   * Added the ability to list the available dictionaries

   * Improved the spell checking interface a bit.

   * Added support for using the Ispell keymapping when checking files.

   * Complete rewrite of the filter interface.   It should now be
     fairly easy to add new filters to Aspell.

   * Added some preliminary developer documentation.

   * Lots of other changes due to the massive overhaul of the source
     code.

Changes from .33.7 to .33.7.1 (Aug 20, 2001)
============================================

   * Minor manual fixes.

   * Compile fix for Gcc 3.0 and Solaris.

Changes from .33.6.3 to .33.7 (Aug 2, 2001)
===========================================

   * Updates to Autoconf 2.50 and switched to the HEAD branch of
     libtools.

   * Fixed a bug which caused Aspell to crash when typo-analysis is not
     used such as when sug-mode is *fast* or *bad spellers*.

   * Added support for typo-analysis even when a soundslike is not used.

   * Fixed a bug which causes extended charters to display incorrectly
     on some platforms

   * Compile fixes so that it will compile with Gcc 3.0.

   * Compile fixed which should allow Aspell to compile with Egcs 1.1.
     I have not been able to actually test it though.  Please let me
     know at kevina@users.sourceforge.net if you have have tried with
     Egcs 1.1.

   * Compile and configuration script fixes so that USE_FILE_INO will
     properly be defined and Aspell will compile correctly when it is
     defined.

   * More ANSI C++ compliance fixes.

Changes from .33.6.2 to .33.6.3 (June 3, 2001)
==============================================

   * Fixed a build problem in the manual/ directory by including
     manual-text and manual-html in the distribution.

Changes from .33.6.1 to .33.6.2 (June 3, 2001)
==============================================

   * Compile fix so that Aspell will work correctly when not installed
     in /usr/local.

   * Avoided regenerating the manual unless configured with
     enable-maintainer-mode.

   * Added the missing documentation files in the scowl directory.

Changes from .33.6 to .33.6.1 (May 29, 2001)
============================================

   * Fixed a formating problem with the manual involving <.

   * Added a note about creating pwli files.

   * Removed the space after between the -L and the directory name in
     the pspell-module/Makefile  which caused problems on some
     platforms.

   * Added the configure option AM_MAINTAINER_MODE to avoid enabling
     rules which often causes generated build files to be rebuild with
     the wrong version of Libtool by default.  I don't know why I
     didn't think to do this a long time ago.

Changes from .33.5 to .33.6 (May 18, 2001)
==========================================

   * Fixed a minor bug where some words would have random compound tags
     attached to them.

   * Fixed a compile problem on many platforms where fileno is defined
     as a macro.

   * Updated the description for a few of Aspell's options.

   * Removed the note of Aspell not being able to run when compiled with
     the upcoming Gcc 3.0 compiler as things seam to work now.

   * Added a note about Aspell not being able to compile with Egcs 1.1.

   * Added hack to deal with Libtool's interdependencies problem.  See
     bug #416981 for Pspell for more info.

Changes from .33 to .33.5 (April 5, 2001)
=========================================

   * *dump master* correctly detects which dictionary and language to
     use based on the `LANG' environment variable.

   * Fixed a problem on Win32 which involves path names that begin with
     <Drive Letter>:.

   * Bug fixes and enhancements so that Aspell can once again run under
     MinGW.  You can even use the new full screen interface if Aspell is
     compiled with PDCurses.

   * Some major modifications to make Aspell more C++ compliant in
     order to get Aspell to compile under the upcoming Gcc 3.0
     compiler.  This included only using STL features found in the
     standard version of C++.  (Which means Aspell will no longer
     require using the SGI version of the STL) This should also make
     compiling C++ under non-gcc compilers a lot simpler.  Please note
     that Aspell still has some problems with the upcoming Gcc 3.0
     compiler.

   * Minor changes to remove some -Wall warnings.

   * Added a hack to that Aspell will properly compile as a shared
     library under Solaris.

   * Added a few import missing words to the English word list.

Changes from .32.6 to .33 (January 28, 2001)
============================================

   * Added a new new curses based interface to replace the dumb terminal
     interface everyone has been bitching about.

   * Added the ability to give higher priority to words such as "the"
     instead of "teh" which are likely to be due to typos.

   * Reorganized the manual so that it is hopefully easier to follow.

   * Ability to automatically select the best dictionary to used based
     on the setting of the `LANG' environment variable.

   * Expanded the medium dictionary size to include more words which
     included the original words found in ispell and eliminated the
     large size for now.

   * Added three special variant add-on dictionaries.

   * Switched to the multi-language branch of the CVS version of
     libtool.


Changes from .32.5 to .32.6 (Nov 8, 2000)
=========================================

   * Fixed a bug that where Aspell will crash when reading in accented
     characters on some platforms.  This fixes bug # 112435.

   * Fixed some other bugs so that it will run under Win32 under CygWin.
     Unfortunately it still won't run properly under Mingw.

   * Fixed the mmap test in configure so that it won't fail on some
     platforms that use munmap(char *, int) instead of munmap(void *,
     int).

   * Upgraded to the latest CVS version of libtool which fixed the
     problem with using GNU Make under Solaris.

   * Added an option to copy files instead of using symbolic links for
     the special *multi* dictionary files.

Changes from .32.1 to .32.5 (August 18, 2000)
=============================================

   * Changed my email from kevinatk at home com to kevina at users
     sourceforge net please make a note of the new email address.

   * Added an option to control if the personal replacement dictionary
     is saved when the save_all_wls method is called.

   * Brought back the ability to dump the master word list even in the
     case of the special *multi* lists.

   * Added a large number of hacker related words and some other slang
     terms to the medium size word list.

   * Added an *ispell* and *spell* compatibility script for systems
     which don't have ispell installed.  They are located in the
     scripts/ directory and are not installed by default.

   * Manual fixes.

   * Added a note on not using GNU Make on Solaris.

Changes from .32 to .32.1 (August 5, 2000)
==========================================

   * Minor compile fixes for recent gcc snapshot.

   * Fixed naming of pwli files.

   * Fixed a bug when aspell will crash when used with certain single
     letter flags.  This bug was most noticeable when used with Emacs.

   * Word list changes, see SCOWL Readme.

   * Other miscellaneous changes.

Changes from .31.1 to .32 (July 23, 2000)
=========================================

   * Added support for optionally doing without the soundslike data.

   * Greatly reduced the amount of memory used when creating word lists.

   * Added support for ignoring accents when coming up with suggestions.

   * Added support for local-data-dir which is searched before data-dir.

   * Added support for specifying which words may be used in compounds
     and where  they may be used.

   * Added support for having more than one main word list as well as a
     special *multi* word list files which will allow multiple word
     lists to be treated as one.

   * Aspell now uses a completely new word list.

   * The apostrophe (') is no longer considered part of the word when
     it as at the end of the word such as in `dogs''.

Changes from .31 to .31.1 (June 18, 2000)
=========================================

   * Fixed a bug where Aspell would not create a complete dictionary
     file on some platforms when the data is 8-bit.

   * Added a workaround so Aspell will work with ispell.el 3.3.

   * Minor compile fixes so it would compile better with the very latest
     gcc (CVS Version).

   * Removed note about compiling in Win32 as I was now able to get it
     to work.

Changes from .30.1 to .31 (June 11, 2000)
=========================================

   * Added support for spell checking run together words.

   * Added an option to produce a list of misspelled words from
     standard input.

   * More robust error reporting when reading in language data files.

   * Fixed a bug when that will cause Aspell to crash if the *special*
     line was not defined in the language data file.

   * Update Pspell Module.

   * Minor bug fixes.

   * Added cross references in "The Aspell Utility Chapter" for easier
     use.

Changes from .30 to .30.1 (April 29, 2000)
==========================================

   * Ported Aspell to Win32 platforms.

   * Portability fixes which may help aspell compile on other platforms.

   * Aspell will no longer fail if for some reason the mmap fails,
     instead it will just read the file in as normal and free the
     memory when done.

   * Minor changes in the format of the main word list as a result of
     the changes, the old format should still work in most cases.

   * Fixed a bug when aspell was ignoring the extension of file names
     such as .html or .tex when checking files.

   * Fixed a bug when aspell will go into an infinite loop when creating
     the main word list from a word list which has duplicates in it.

   * Minor changes to the manual for better clarity.

Changes from .29.1 to .30 (April 2, 2000)
=========================================

   * Fixed many of the capitalization bugs found in previous versions of
     Aspell.

   * Changed the format of the main word list yet again.

   * Fixed a bug so that `aspell check' will work on the PowerPC.

   * Added ability to change configuration options in the middle of a
     session.

   * Added words from /usr/dict/words found on most Linux systems as
     well as a bunch of commonly used abbreviation to the word list.

   * Fixed a bug when aspell will dump core after reporting certain
     errors when compiled with gcc 2.95 or higher.  This involved
     reworked the Exception heritage to get around a bug in gcc 2.95.

   * Added a few more commands to the list of default commands the TeX
     filter knows about.

   * Aspell will now check if a word only contains valid characters
     before adding it to any dictionaries.  This might mean that you
     have to manually delete a few words from your personal word list.

   * Added option to ignore case when checking a document.

   * Adjusted the parameters of the *normal* suggest mode to so that
     significantly less far fetched results are returned in cases such
     as tomatoe, which went from 100 suggestions down to 32, at the
     expense of getting slightly lower results (less than 1%),

   * Improved the edit distance algorithm for slightly faster results.

   * Removed the `$$m' command in pipe mode, you should now use `$$cs
     mode,MODE' to set the mode and *$$cr mode* to find out the current
     mode.

   * Reworked parts of Aspell to use Pspell services to avoid
     duplicating code.

   * Added a module for the newly released Pspell.  It will get
     installed with the rest of aspell.

   * Miscellaneous other bug fixes.

Changes from .29 to .29.1 (Feb 18, 2000)
========================================

   * Improved the TeX filter so that it will accept '@' at the begging
     of a command name and ignore trailing '*'s.  It also now has better
     defaults for which parameters to skip.

   * Reworked the main dictionary so that it can be memory mapped in.
     This decreases startup time and allows multiple aspell processes
     to use the same memory for the main word list.  This also also
     made Aspell 64 bit clean so that it should work on an alpha now.

   * Fix so that aspell can compile on platforms that gnu as is not
     available for.

   * Fixed issue with flock so it would compile on FreeBSD.

   * Minor changes in the code to make it more C++ compliant although I
     am sure there will still be problems when using some other
     compiler other than gcc or egcs.

   * Added some comments to the header files to better document a few of
     the classes.

Changes from .28.3 to .29 (Feb 6, 2000)
=======================================

   * Fixed a bug in the pipe mode with lines that start with `^$$'.

   * Added support for ignoring all words less than or equal to a
     specified length

   * New soundslike code based thanks to the contribution of Björn
     Jacke.  It now gets all of its data from a table making it easier
     for other people to add soundslike code for their native language.
     He also converted the metaphone algorithm to table form,
     eliminating the need for the old metaphone code.

   * Major redesign of the suggestion code for better results.

   * Changed the format of the personal word lists.  In most cases it
     should be converted automatically.

   * Changed the format of the main word list.

   * Name space cleanup for more consistent naming.  I now use name
     spaces which means that gcc 2.8.* and egcs 1.0.* will no longer
     cut it.

   * Used file locks when reading and saving the personal dictionaries
     so that it truly multiprocess safe.

   * Added rudimentary filter support.

   * Reworked the configuration system once again.  However, the
     changes to the end user who does not directly use my library
     should be minimal.

   * Rewrote my code that handles parsing command line parameters so
     that it no longer uses popt as it was causing to many problems and
     didn't integrate well with my new configuration system.

   * Fixed pipe mode so that it will properly ignore lines starting with
     '~' for better ispell compatibility.

   * Aspell now has a new home page at
     `http://aspell.sourceforge.net/'.  Please make note of the new URL.

   * Miscellaneous manual fixes and clarifications.

Changes from .28.2.1 to .28.3 (Nov 20, 1999)
============================================

   * Fixed a bug that caused aspell to crash when spell checking words
     over 60 characters long.

   * Reworked *aspell check* so that
       1. You no longer have to hit enter when making a choice.

       2. It will now overwrite the original file instead of creating a
          new file.  An optional backup can be made by using the -b
          option.

   * Fixed a few bugs in data.cc.

Changes from .28.2 to .28.2.1 (Aug 25, 1999)
============================================

   * Fixed the version number for the shared library.

   * Fixed a problem with undefined references when linking to the
     shared library.

Changes from .28.1 to .28.2 (Aug 25, 1999)
==========================================

   * Fixed a bunch of bugs in the language and configuration classes.

   * Minor changed in the code so that it could compile with the new gcc
     2.95(.1).

   * Changed the output of `dump config' so that default values are
     given the value `<default>'.  This means that the output can be
     used to created a configuration file.

   * Added notes on using aspell with VIM.

Changes from .28 to .28.1 (July 27, 1999)
=========================================

   * Removed some debug output

   * Changed notes on compiling with gcc 2.8.* as I managed to get it to
     compile on my school account

   * Avoided included *stdexcept* in `const_string.hh' so that I could
     get to compile on my schools account with gcc 2.8.1.

Changes from .27.2 to .28 (July 25, 1999)
=========================================

     Provided an iterator for the replacement classes.

   * Added support for dumping and creating and merging the personal and
     replacement word lists.

   * Changed the aspell utility command line a bit, it now used popt.

   * Totally reworked aspell configuration system.  Now aspell can get
     configuration from any of 5 sources: the command line, the
     environment variable `ASPELL_CONF', the personal configuration
     file, the global configuration file, and finally the compiled in
     defaults.

   * Totally reworked the language class in preparation for my new
     language code.  See <http://aspell.sourceforge.net/international/>
     for more information of what I have in store.

   * Added some options to the configure script: -enable-dict-dir=DIR,
     -enable-doc-dir=DIR, -enable-debug, and -enable-opt

   * Removed some old header files.

   * Reorganized the directory structure a bit

   * Made the text version of the manual pages slightly easier to read

   * Used the `\url' command for urls for better formating of the
     printed version.

Changes from .27.1 to .27.2 (Mar 1, 1999)
=========================================

   * Fixed a major bug that caused aspell to dump core when used without
     any arguments

   * Fixed another major bug that caused aspell to do nothing when used
     in interactive mode.

   * Added an option to exit in Aspell's interactive mode.

   * Removed some old documentation files from the distribution.

   * Minor changes on to the section on using Aspell with egcs.

   * Minor changes to remove -Wall warnings.

Changes from .27 to .27.1 (Feb 24, 1999)
========================================

   * Fixed a minor compile problem.

   * Updated the section on using Aspell with egcs to it it more clear
     why the patch is necessary.

Changes from .26.2 to .27 (Feb 22, 1999)
========================================

   * Totally reworked the C++ library which means you may need to change
     some things in your code.

   * Added support for detachable and multiple personal dictionaries in
     the C++ class library.

   * The C++ class library now throws exceptions.

   * Reworked aspell ability to learn from users misspellings a bit so
     that it now has a memory.  For more information see *Note Notes on
     Storing Replacement Pairs::.

   * Upgraded autoconf to version 2.13 and automake to version 1.4 for
     better portability.

   * Fixed the configuration so the `make dist' will work.  For now on
     aspell will be distributed with `make dist'.

   * Added support to skip over URL's, email addresses and host names.

   * Added support for dumping the master and personal word list.  You
     can now also merge a personal word list.  Type aspell -help for
     help on using this feature.

   * Reorganized the source code.

   * Started using proper version numbers for the shared library.

   * Fixed a bug that caused a spell to crash when adding certain
     replacement pairs.

   * Fixed the problem with duplicate lines when exiting pipe mode for
     good.

Changed from .26.1 to .26.2 (Jan 3, 1998)
=========================================

   * Fixed another compile problem.  Hopefully this time it will really
     compile OK on other peoples machines.

Changed from .26 to .26.1 (Jan 3, 1998)
=======================================

   * Fixed a small compile problem in `as_data.cc'.

Changed from .25.1 to .26 (Jan 3, 1999)
=======================================

   * Fixed a bug that causes duplicates items to be displayed in the
     suggestion list for good.  (If it still does it please send be
     email.)

   * Added the ability for aspell to learn form the users misspellings.

   * Library Interface changes.  Still more to come ....

   * Is now multiprocess safe.  When a personal dictionary (or
     replacement list) is saved it will now first update he list
     against the dictionary on disk in case another process modified it.

   * Fixed the bug that caused duplicate output when used non
     interactively in pipe mode.

   * Dropped support for gcc 2.7.2 as the C++ compiler.

   * Updated the How Aspell Works (*Note Aspell Suggestion Strategy::.)

   * Added support for the `ASPELL_DATA_DIR' environment variable.

Changes from .25 to .25.1 (Dec 10, 1998)
========================================

   * Fixed the version number so that Aspell reports the correct version
     number.

   * Changed the note on gcc 2.7.2 compilers to make it clear that only
     the C++ compiler cannot be gcc 2.7.2, it is OK if the C compiler
     is gcc 2.7.2.

   * Updated the TODO list and reorganized it a bit.

   * Fixed the directory so that all the documentation will get
     installed in ${prefix}/doc/aspell instead of half of it in
     ${prefix}/doc/aspell and half of it in ${prefix}/doc/kspell.

Changes from .24 to .25 (Nov 23, 1998)
======================================

   * Total rework of how the main word list is stored.  Start up time
     decreased to about 1/3 of what it was in .24 and memory usage
     decreased to about 2/3.  (When used with the provided word list on
     a Linux system).

     Also the format and default locations of the main word list data
     files changed in the process and the data is now machine
     dependent.  The personal word list format, however, stayed the
     same.

   * Changed the scoring method to produce slightly better results with
     words like the vs.  teh.  And other simpler misspellings where two
     letters are swapped.

   * Fixed the very unpredictable behavior of the `*', `&', `@'
     commands in the pipe mode.

   * Added documentations for Aspell pipe mode (also known as `ispell
     -a' compatibility mode)

   * Added a bunch of Aspell specific extensions to the pipe mode and
     documented them.

   * Documented the `to_soundslike' and `soundslike' methods for the
     `aspell' class.

   * Changed the scoring method to produce better results for words like
     _fone_ vs _phone_ and other words that have a spelling that
     doesn't directly relate to how the word sounds by using the phoneme
     equivalent of the word in the scoring of it.

   * Added the `to_phoneme' and `have_phoneme' methods to the
     `SC_Language' class.

   * Added the `to_phoneme' method to the `aspell' class.

   * Added the framework for being able to learn from the users
     misspelling.  Right now it just keep a log of replacements.

   * Redid `stl_rope-30.diff'.  For some reason the version of patch on
     my system refused it.

   * Rewrite of the "_Using as a replacement for Ispell_" section and
     added the `run-with-aspell' utility as a replacement of the old
     method of mapping Ispell to Aspell.

   * Fixed a bug that caused duplicate words to appear in the suggestion
     list.

Changes from .23 to .24 (Nov 8, 1998)
=====================================

   * Fixed my code so that it can once again compile with g++ 2.7.2.

   * Rewrote the How It Works chapter.

   * Rewrote the Requirement section and added noted on compiling with
     g++ 2.7.2.

   * Added a To Do chapter.

   * Added a Glossary and References chapter.

   * Other minor documentation improvements.

   * Internal code documentation improvements.

Changes from .22.1 to .23 (Oct 31, 1998)
========================================

   * Minor documentation fixes.

   * Changed the scoring strategy for words with 3 or less letters.
     This cut the number of words returned for these roughly in half.

   * Expanded the word list to also include *american.0* and
     *american.1* from the Ispell distribution.  It now includes
     *english.0*, *english.1*, *american.0* and *american.1* from the
     directory `languages/english' provided with Ispell 3.1.20.

   * Added a link to the location of the latest Ispell.el in the
     documentation.

   * Started a C interface and added some rough documentation for it.

Changes from .22 to .22.1 (Oct 27, 1998)
========================================

   * Minor bug fixes.  I was deleting arrays with delete rather than
     delete[].  I was suppressed that this had not created a problem.

   * Added a simple test program to test for a memory leak present on
     some systems.  (Only debian slink at the moment.) See the file
     memleak-test.cc for more info.

Changes from .21 to .22 (Oct 26, 1998)
======================================

   * Major redesign or the scoring method.  It now uses absolute
     distances rather than relative scores for more consistent results.
     See `suggest.cc' for more info.

   * Suggest code rewritten is several places however the core process
     stayed the same.

   * The `suggest_ultra' method temporarily does nothing.  It should be
     working again by the next release.

Changes from .20 to .21 (Oct 13, 1998)
======================================

   * Added documentation for aspell::Error

   *  Changed the library name from `libspell' to `libaspell'.  It
     should never have been `libspell' in the first place.  Sorry for
     the incompatibility.

   * Added `as_error.hh' to the list of files copied to the include
     directory so that you can actually use the library outside of the
     source dir.

   * Fixed bug that caused a segmentation fault with words where the
     only suggestions was inserting a space or hyphen such as in
     *ledgerline*.

   * Added the *score* method to `aspell'.

   * Changed the scoring method to deal with word when the user uses
     "f" in place of "ph" a lot better.

Changes from .11 to .20 (Oct 10, 1998)
======================================

   * _Name change_.  Everything that was Kspell is now Aspell.  Sorry,
     the name Kspell was already used by KDE and I didn't want to cause
     any confusion.

   * Fixed a bug that causes a segmentation fault when the `HOME'
     environment variable doesn't exist.

Changes from .10 to .11 (Sep 12, 1998)
======================================

   * Overhaul of the SC_Language class

   * Added documentation for international support

   * Added documentation for the C++ library

   * Other minor bug fixes.


File: aspell.info,  Node: Authors,  Next: Copying,  Prev: ChangeLog,  Up: Top

Authors
*******

The folowing people or companies have contributed a non-trival amount of
code to Aspell and thus own the Copyright to part of Aspell.

Jose Da Silva
     Bug fixes and enhancements to `word-list-compress'.

Sergey Poznyakoff
     Wrote the Nroff filter.

Tom Snyder
     Enhanced the SGML filter to also support skipping sgml tags such as
     "script" blocks.

Kevin B. Hendricks (and Contributers)
     Wrote MySpell which is a simpile spell checker library that
     supports affix compression.  Aspell affix compression code is
     based on his code.

Christoph Hintermüller
     Added support for for loadable filters.

Melvin Hadasht
     Wrote a locale independent version of strtol and strtod.  Wrote
     the original loadable filter support however his code has been
     completely rewritten by Christoph Hintermüller and Kevin Atkinson.

Björn Jacke
     Wrote the generic soundslike algorithm which gets all of its data
     from a file, thus eliminating almost all need for language
     specific code from Aspell.

Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard Company
     Parts of the SGI STL code were used in various places throughout
     the Aspell source.


   In addition the authors of some of translated messages did not
release their work into the Public Domain, and thus own the copyright
to the translated text.  See the files `*.po' in the `po' directory for
more details.

   The folowing people also contributed to the development of Aspell
but do not own the Copyright to part of Aspell.

Sergey Poznyakoff
     Added gettext support.

Chris Martin
     Converted the manual to texinfo.

Lawrence Philips
     Wrote the original metaphone algorithm; however, he released his
     work into the Public Domain.

Michael Kuhn
     Converted the metaphone algorithm into C code and made some
     enhansments to the orignal algorithm.  He also released his work
     into the Public Domain.

Geoff Kuenning (and contributers)
     The authors of Ispell.  Many of the ideas used in Aspell,
     espacally with the affix code, were taken from Ispell.  However
     none of the orignal Ispell code is used in Aspell.



File: aspell.info,  Node: Copying,  Prev: Authors,  Up: Top

Copying
*******

Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Kevin Atkinson.

   Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.  A
copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
Documentation License".

   The library and utility program is copyright (C) 2000-2004 by Kevin
Atkinson.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
the GNU Lesser General Public License as (LGPL) published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

   Certain parts of the library, as indicated at the top of the source
file, are under a weaker license.  However, all parts of the library
are LGPL Compatible.

* Menu:

* GNU Free Documentation License::
* GNU Lesser General Public License::


File: aspell.info,  Node: GNU Free Documentation License,  Next: GNU Lesser General Public License,  Up: Copying

GNU Free Documentation License
==============================

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ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
----------------------------------------------------

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File: aspell.info,  Node: GNU Lesser General Public License,  Prev: GNU Free Documentation License,  Up: Copying

GNU Lesser General Public License
=================================

                      Version 2.1, February 1999
     Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
     59 Temple Place -- Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
     
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