[aspell] Re: Aspell in LyX

[Kevin Atkinson]

Asger Alstrup Nielsen wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I just read about Aspell on freshmeat, and figured this is a great
> project.
> I'm a member of the LyX development team, and I would like to use a
> different spell checker than ispell.  It seems Aspell fits the job!
> 
> So, the question is:  How should this be done?
> 
> I browsed the documentation you have on the web-site, and saw that you
> already implemented a ispell -a compatibility mode, so it should be
> possible to use this.
> 
> However, that solution is not optional.  I rould rather see that Aspell is
> provided as a library which the LyX code can link against, and then use the
> Aspell API to get the job done.  That would ensure maximum speed and
> flexibility.
> 
> Can Aspell be compiled to a library already, or are there any plans to do
> this?  Do you have other ideas for how to do this?

Yes it is a library.  In fact the aspell utility is nothing but a small
wrapper
program.  All the real work is done in the library.  See the section on
The C++ Library.

> 
> At the moment, the LyX team is working in two branches:  Finalizing of LyX
> v1.0, and doing a lot of work on the development series 1.1.  In the 1.1
> series, we have adopted the STL, and use it a lot.  So this fits right in
> with the approach in Aspell.
> 
> If LyX would come with Aspell support, and we could boast that it is much
> better than the Microsoft Word spellchecker, the result would be to the
> benefit of both Aspell and LyX.  However, in order to do so, Aspell has to
> support more languages than English.

I would not say it does much better.  I would say on average at least as 
well.  That 5 should have been an 8 in the chart on the manual.

> 
> So regarding word lists for other languages than English - check out this
> site:
> 
> http://www.win-uk.net/~hyphen/wordlist.html
> 
> At the bottom, there is a link to an ftp-site where word-lists for many,
> many languages are available:
> 
> ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/wordlists/
> 
> It seems they are in the public domain, and thus they should be available
> for use in Aspell without problems.
> 
> I suppose it is possible to write a small program that takes a file and
> produces an alphabet from it.  Given that, it should be relatively easy to
> generate the language definition files Aspell needs..

Yes it would however I would still need to pick out the vowels.  I will
defiantly look into it though.

> 
> I've downloaded Aspell and will try to get it running with the Danish
> dictionary when I have time.

Please do as my the language support feature is totally untested.  Also
I *SUCK* at foreign languages.  I barley passes Spanish high school.

-- 
Kevin Atkinson
address@hidden
http://sunsite.unc.edu/kevina/

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