Re: [Aspell-user] Help adding word to dictionary?

[traverso]

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016, Ciarán Ó Duibhín wrote:
> True at present, unfortunately.  But in principle, an option could be 
> programmed, to make aspell accept "drop-down" when the dictionary contains 
> "drop" and "down".  The only manual additions to the dictionary would then be 
> words like "hotch-potch", because "hotch" and "potch" are not in the 
> dictionary.
>

But it does currently; drop-down is accepted, as is drop-dawn (do you
want it?); dropdown is rejected and drop-down is suggested. And you
can add dropdown to your dictionary if you want (but not drop-dawn to
the rejected list). But not hotch-potch (you can add both, but you
probably don't want).

In French, belle-mère and beau-père are accepted, and belle-père is
rejected (suggesting belle-mère between others; beau-père is not
suggested, too far in keystrokes). And you can add belle-père
(possible in a humoristic context, but pretty much weird). This is OK
for French.

> I think such an option would be generally useful, at least for English, and 
> incidentally would make aspell behave more like the MS-Word spell-checker.
>
> I made such a modification a few years ago, and it worked to my own 
> satisfaction, but the code changes would require to be examined by someone 
> fully conversant with the workings of aspell before it could be considered 
> safe.

The solution of a "special" English dictionary changing the "special"
not only requires to identify the good hyphenated words, but requires
a different language, because the en.dat is unique for all the en
dictionaries, and many users might prefer the current behaviour. So it
is a suggestion only if you compile it yourself. Having "special"
declarations per dictionary might be complicated; already describing
the expected behaviour of aspell when you mix specials is complicated
(I know, having tried to describe what I expect to have in a document
mixing English and French or German: parsing words is already badly
defined). 

Carlo