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Next: 3. Basic Usage Up: GNU Aspell 0.50.3 Previous: 1. Introduction   
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Subsections

  * 2.1 Requirements
  * 2.2 Obtaining
  * 2.3 Support
  * 2.4 Helping Out
  * 2.5 Compiling & Installing
      + 2.5.1 Generic Install Instructions
      + 2.5.2 General Problems
      + 2.5.3 Curses Notes
      + 2.5.4 Upgrading from Aspell .33/Pspell .12
      + 2.5.5 Upgrading from a pre-release snapshot
      + 2.5.6 Win32 Notes
   
  * 2.6 Using aspell-import

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2. Getting Started


2.1 Requirements

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 with out
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, etc...) in order to build.
Aspell also uses a few POSIX functions when necessary.

2.2 Obtaining

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

2.3 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.

2.4 Helping Out

I have very little time to work on Aspell so I desperately need other
people to help with the development of Aspell. There are a lot of things
that need to be done before I consider Aspell complete. See section B.1
for a list of them. I would really appreciate some help with doing them.
If you are interested in helping with one of them please let me know.

I am also looking for someone to eventually take over the maintenance and
development of Aspell. If you are interested please contact me directly.

2.5 Compiling & Installing

2.5.1 Generic Install Instructions

    ./configure && make

For additional configure options type ./configure --help. You can control
what C++ compiler is used by setting the environmental variable CXX before
running configure and you can control what flags are passed to the C++
compile via the environmental 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 with out 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 than you should also copy the compatibly scripts
"ispell" and "spell" located in the scripts/ directory into your
binary directory which is usually /usr/local/bin so that programs that
expect ispell or spell command will work correctly.

2.5.2 General Problems

Aspell does not use a released version of GNU Libtool. If you have a need
to modify configure.ac or any of the Makefile.am's you should install the
CVS version of libtool.

2.5.3 Curses Notes

If you are having problems compiling termios.cc than the most likely
reason is due to incompatibilities with the curses implementation on your
system. If this is the case than you can explicitly disable the curses
library with --disable-curses. 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"), the name of the
library (for example "ncurses") or a combined location and library in
the form "-L«lib dir» -l«lib»" (for example "-L/usr/local/ncurses/lib
-lncurses"). Dir is the location of the curses header files (for example
"/usr/local/ncurses/include").

2.5.4 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 compatible 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 get 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 due
this. Unfortunately there is isn't any simply way to find out which
dictionaries are installed which will work with both the old Aspell/Pspell
and the new GNU Aspell.

2.5.5 Upgrading from a pre-release snapshot

At the last minute I decided to merge the "speller-util" program into
the main "aspell" program. You may right 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.

2.5.6 Win32 Notes

Due to limited time and my general dislike for Microsoft Windows, Win32 is
not an officially supported platform for Aspell. However, it is possible
for someone with experience with the Cgiwin development environment to
create an Aspell binary and library (dll) using gcc as others have done
so. The library, in theory, should be able to be used by any Win32
compiler if it is compiled right, but this theory has never been tested.

Aspell requires Gcc 2.95 (or better) and the Cgiwin development
environment in order to compile on Win32. Both the Cgiwin or the Mingw
version of Gcc should work. The Mingw version of Aspell will have slightly
less functionality, but none of which is noticeable to the end user.
Microsoft Visual C++, however, will not work with the released version of
Aspell as the compiler is far to buggy as far as C++ compliance goes.
However, there is a patch available which should allow Aspell to compile
using Microsoft Visual C++ which you can find at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/
aspell.

In order to get the nice full screen interface with Mingw when spell
checking files a curses implementation that does not require Cygwin is
required. The PDCurses (http://www.lightlink.com/hessling/PDCurses/)
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.

If Aspell is compiled with --enable-win32-relocatable and the bindir is
set to the same value as prefix (ie not «prefix»/bin) then the Aspell
directory (what prefix is set to) can be relocated anywhere provided that
none of the data files are moved around within the Aspell directory.
Please not that this feature has not been tested with GNU Aspell 0.50 so
it may or may not work.

The default paths for Aspell are designed for a Unix system and not a
Win32 system so you might want to specify different ones when compiling
Aspell. Also if the HOME environmental variable is not set Aspell will
assume it is the current working directly. This may lead to your personal
word lists being saved in unpredictable locations. To solve this either
compile with --enable-win32-relocatable (see above) or specify the
complete path of the personal and replacement word lists in aspell.conf.
If Aspell is compiled with --enable-win32-relocatable than the personal
word lists are saved in the prefix directory and the name is changed from
".aspell.<lang>.*" to" <lang>.*".

If you have experience with using Cgiwin or a Unix like environment and
are willing to maintain an Aspell binary and/or library I would be willing
to work with you to get Aspell to compile. If you are seriously interested
please post to aspell-devel@gnu.org after you have given it an initial
try. However, if, after reading this section, you do not know how to start
then you most likely do not have the necessary experience to be able to
get Aspell to compile. Please do not bother me with questions such as "I
would like to use Aspell on Win32 but I have no idea what to do.", as I
am not willing to teach you the basics of working with a Unix like
environment.

2.6 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 than 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.

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next up previous contents
Next: 3. Basic Usage Up: GNU Aspell 0.50.3 Previous: 1. Introduction   
Contents
Kevin Atkinson 2002-11-23
