[PATCH] When spell binary not found, point to ispell

[PATCH] When spell binary not found, point to ispell

[Michael Olson]

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After receiving a bug report about the spell command not being found, I
wanted a nice way of redirecting new users towards ispell, which is more
likely installed on their systems.

What do others think?

2008-01-09  Michael Olson  <mwolson@gnu.org>

	* textmodes/spell.el (spell-region): If spell-command is not
	found, display a warning that suggests using the more
	commonly-used ispell library instead.  This helps new users out.

diff --git a/lisp/textmodes/spell.el b/lisp/textmodes/spell.el
index e8e085d..1ab9f3b 100644
--- a/lisp/textmodes/spell.el
+++ b/lisp/textmodes/spell.el
@@ -85,6 +85,13 @@ Used in a program, applies from START to END.
 DESCRIPTION is an optional string naming the unit being checked:
 for example, \"word\"."
   (interactive "r")
+  (unless (executable-find spell-command)
+    (display-warning 'spell
+		     (concat (format "Program `%s' not found.\n" spell-command)
+			     "\nYou may want to use the `ispell' commands"
+			     " (ispell-word, ispell-buffer) instead.\n")
+		     :error)
+    (error "Program `%s' not found" spell-command))
   (let ((filter spell-filter)
 	(buf (get-buffer-create " *temp*")))
     (save-excursion

-- 
       Michael Olson -- FSF Associate Member #652     |
 http://mwolson.org/ -- Jabber: mwolson_at_hcoop.net  |  /` |\ | | |
          Programmer -- Hobbies: Lisp, HCoop          | |_] | \| |_|
Projects: Emacs, Muse, ERC, EMMS, ErBot, DVC, Planner |

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Re: [PATCH] When spell binary not found, point to ispell

[Richard Stallman]

    After receiving a bug report about the spell command not being found, I
    wanted a nice way of redirecting new users towards ispell, which is more
    likely installed on their systems.

Your patch is a good idea.  But I wonder if we should go even further,
such as mark these spell.el commands obsolete, or make them aliases
for ispell.el commands.

Re: [PATCH] When spell binary not found, point to ispell

[Stefan Monnier]

>     After receiving a bug report about the spell command not being found, I
>     wanted a nice way of redirecting new users towards ispell, which is more
>     likely installed on their systems.

> Your patch is a good idea.  But I wonder if we should go even further,
> such as mark these spell.el commands obsolete, or make them aliases
> for ispell.el commands.

Indeed, I was thinking that spell.el should be moved to the `obsolete' subdir.


        Stefan