flyspell-mode and two languages

flyspell-mode and two languages

[Memnon Anon]

Hi!

I love flyspell-mode. But I often have to edit files containing 2
languages, in most
cases german and english. I was wondering how you solved this. Is
there a way to
define a main-language, and if the word seems to be misspelled, check
a
secondary-language?

Any hint appreciated...

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[harven]

Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi!
>
> I love flyspell-mode. But I often have to edit files containing 2
> languages, in most
> cases german and english. I was wondering how you solved this. Is
> there a way to
> define a main-language, and if the word seems to be misspelled, check
> a
> secondary-language?
>
> Any hint appreciated...

Several solutions have been devised: flyspellbabel, flyspellxmllang,
autolangmode,guesslang, guessbufferlanguage. Have a look at the wiki
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategorySpelling 
I didn't try any of these packages, so I can't provide feedback.

Hope that helps

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Xah]

On Oct 17, 1:02 pm, Memnon Anon <gegendosenflei...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I love flyspell-mode. But I often have to edit files containing 2
> languages, in most
> cases german and english. I was wondering how you solved this. Is
> there a way to
> define a main-language, and if the word seems to be misspelled, check
> a
> secondary-language?
>
> Any hint appreciated...

no answer to your specific question... but last time i tried flyspell
and was extremely dissatisfied  with it. For primarily 2 reasons, in
order of importance:

(1) it doesn't let me right click to select from a list of correct
spellings. What i have to do is to go to each word and do ispell-word.

(2) its vocabulary is extremely small. Words in modern journalism will
typically light it up like neolight show. (e.g. try any article from
Time mag (e.g. time.com ))

I haven't really spend time to dig solutions on these, but basically
abandoned it. What i do is to have a keyboard shortcut that open the
current buffer in TextWrangle (aka BBEdit Light), press a button then
it highlight all unkown words, then right click on each to fix, then
save, close, then back to emacs refresh buffer.

However, last week i found

• Batch style spell checker http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/SpeckMode
by Martin Rudalics.

which is really wonderful. It does (1) like most word processors. I'm
not sure if it does contain good sized vocabulary yet.

With respect to your question, possibly you could give it a try and
maybe it allows multiple lang vocabs. (i'm guessing it does. For one
thing, you could add the unknown word. However, i'm not sure where is
the source file it adds to. Did spent few min on it but didn't find
it.)

Related, if you are a dictionary buff like me, you might also like:

★ http://www.myrkr.in-berlin.de/dictionary/index.html by Torsten
Hilbrich↗ . Lookup English word definitions in emacs thru online
English dictionary server.

There are several others but this is one i tried and sufficiently
happy with.

Also, most or all emacs dicts are interface to open sourced dicts
online. Open sourced dicts are low quality when compared to pro ones.
If you work with English in some semi-pro capacity, you'll need access
to commercial ones. This i do like this:

(defun lookup-word-definition-in-w3m ()
"Look up the word's definition in a emacs-w3m.\n
If a region is active (a phrase), lookup that phrase."
 (interactive)
 (let (myword myurl)
   (setq myword
         (if (and transient-mark-mode mark-active)
             (buffer-substring-no-properties (region-beginning)
(region-end))
           (thing-at-point 'symbol)))

  (setq myword (replace-regexp-in-string " " "%20" myword))
  (setq myurl (concat "http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s="
myword))
  (w3m-browse-url myurl)
   ))

The url used above is American Heritage Dict, which i find the best
among some 4 or so prof dicts that are available free online.

See also:
A Review of 3 Dictionaries
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/dict_review.html

in my setup, pressing 0 on the numerical keypad gets me to def of the
current word or text selection from open sourced dict using Torsten
Hilbrich's dict mode. Pressing Shift-0 gets me to American Heritage
thru w3m to a website. Pressing Ctrl+0 gets me to Wikipedia in a
browser.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Xah <xahlee@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:35:52 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> no answer to your specific question... but last time i tried flyspell
> and was extremely dissatisfied  with it. For primarily 2 reasons, in
> order of importance:
> 
> (1) it doesn't let me right click to select from a list of correct
> spellings. What i have to do is to go to each word and do ispell-word.

That is not true for as long as I can remember: nowadays
right-clicking on a misspelled word pops up a menu of suggested
replacements.  How many years ago was that ``last time you tried
flyspell''?

> (2) its vocabulary is extremely small.

Flyspell doesn't have a vocabulary of its own, it invokes either
Ispell or Aspell behind the scenes.  So it's up to you what speller
and which dictionaries to install.  Latest versions of both Ispell and
Aspell are quite good, actually.

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Nikolaj Schumacher]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

>> From: Xah <xahlee@gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:35:52 -0700 (PDT)
>> 
> That is not true for as long as I can remember: nowadays
> right-clicking on a misspelled word pops up a menu of suggested
> replacements.  How many years ago was that ``last time you tried
> flyspell''?

I never use the mouse in Emacs, but now that I check it says
"mouse-2: correct word at point"

That would be the /middle/ button, right?

Since Macs don't have middle buttons, this binds it to secondary click:

(define-key flyspell-mouse-map '[(down-mouse-3)] 'flyspell-correct-word)

>> (2) its vocabulary is extremely small.
>
> Flyspell doesn't have a vocabulary of its own, it invokes either
> Ispell or Aspell behind the scenes.  So it's up to you what speller
> and which dictionaries to install.  Latest versions of both Ispell and
> Aspell are quite good, actually.

And doesn't speck use those two as well?

regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> From: Nikolaj Schumacher <me@nschum.de>
> Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:15:01 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> >> From: Xah <xahlee@gmail.com>
> >> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:35:52 -0700 (PDT)
> >> 
> > That is not true for as long as I can remember: nowadays
> > right-clicking on a misspelled word pops up a menu of suggested
> > replacements.  How many years ago was that ``last time you tried
> > flyspell''?
> 
> I never use the mouse in Emacs, but now that I check it says
> "mouse-2: correct word at point"

You can always use the function it runs, "M-x flyspell-correct-word".

> That would be the /middle/ button, right?

By default, yes.  But I always remap them, because it's easier to
right-click, especially with a mouse that has a wheel for its middle
button.

> > Flyspell doesn't have a vocabulary of its own, it invokes either
> > Ispell or Aspell behind the scenes.  So it's up to you what speller
> > and which dictionaries to install.  Latest versions of both Ispell and
> > Aspell are quite good, actually.
> 
> And doesn't speck use those two as well?

What or who is speck?

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Teemu Likonen]

Eli Zaretskii [2008-10-18 10:43 +0200]:

> What or who is speck?

Speck mode is an on-the-fly spelling checker:

    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SpeckMode

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>
> Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:55:27 +0300
> 
> Eli Zaretskii [2008-10-18 10:43 +0200]:
> 
> > What or who is speck?
> 
> Speck mode is an on-the-fly spelling checker:
> 
>     http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SpeckMode

Thanks.  In that case, yes, speck also uses Ispell or Aspell
dictionaries.

Re: flyspell-mode and two languages

[Xah]

On Oct 17, 5:15 pm, Nikolaj Schumacher <m...@nschum.de> wrote:

> > flyspell''?
>
> I never use the mouse in Emacs, but now that I check it says
> "mouse-2: correct word at point"
>
> That would be the /middle/ button, right?

Ah, the middle button. Hot damn.

> Since Macs don't have middle buttons, this binds it to secondary click:

Macs now do have middle button, since Apple introduced its hand-
crippling Mighty mouse in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Mighty_Mouse

i have my might mouse sitting in dust.

> (define-key flyspell-mouse-map '[(down-mouse-3)] 'flyspell-correct-word)

It needs the hook, else emacs complaints that the map is nil when
starting up. For newbies, here's the code:

(add-hook 'flyspell-mode-hook
 (lambda ()
   (define-key flyspell-mouse-map (kbd "<mouse-3>") 'flyspell-correct-
word)
 )
)

Thanks for clearing up the issues. It seems now i don't have much need
for speck-mode ...

PS when one accumulated good sized vocabs, is there a place one can
send the “~/.aspell.en.pws” file to its developers?

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄