aspell and emacs

aspell and emacs

[Neon Absentius]

Hello

I know that by setting 

(setq ispell-program-name "aspell")

emacs uses the aspell program instead of ispell. I don't know however
how to make emacs aware of a new dictionary. Specifically I just
installed the greek aspell dictionary and I have no idea how to 
make emacs aware of the fact. 

Any help and/or pointing to specific documentation will be greatly
appreciated.

-- 
Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
    -- Neon Absentius
absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Re: aspell and emacs

[Ehud Karni]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 09:28:53 +0000, Neon Absentius <absent@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
>
> (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
>
> emacs uses the aspell program instead of ispell. I don't know however
> how to make emacs aware of a new dictionary. Specifically I just
> installed the greek aspell dictionary and I have no idea how to
> make emacs aware of the fact.

You should read the help for variables `ispell-dictionary-alist',
`ispell-dictionary' `ispell-local-dictionary' and the function
`(ispell-change-dictionary'. You may also need to set
`emacs.pane.menubar.font' and `emacs.menu.popup.font' in your
.Xdefaults to a font that can display greek letters.

An example for how to set the it to use the Hebrew dictionary is:

    (require 'ispell)

    ;; Tell emacs what constitutes a word.
    (add-to-list 'ispell-dictionary-alist
                 '("hebrew8"
                   "[a-zA-Z\340-\372]"                 ;Latin and Hebrew
                   "[^a-zA-Z\340-\372]"
                   "['\"]" t ("-B") nil iso-8859-8))   ;Hebrew charset

    (setq ispell-dictionary "hebrew8")
    (ispell-change-dictionary "hebrew8")
    (set-default 'ispell-local-dictionary "hebrew8")

    ;; Adding the Hebrew dictionary to ispell menu
    (if (fboundp 'define-key-after)
        (define-key-after ispell-menu-map [ispell-select-hebrew8]
          '("Select Hebrew8 Dict" . (lambda()
                                      (interactive)
                                      (ispell-change-dictionary "hebrew8")))
          'american))

My .Xdefaults has:
emacs.pane.menubar.font:  -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8
emacs.menu.popup.font:    -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8


The Hebrew speller (hspell) is the the work of Dan Kenigsberg and Nadav
Har'El. The site URL: http://ivrix.org.il/projects/spell-checker/ (this
page is not accessible just now, but the hspell files are also here:
http://sf.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=99645&package_id=107592 .

Ehud.


--
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Re: aspell and emacs

[Neon Absentius]

On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 12:31:27PM +0200, Ehud Karni wrote:
>-- 8< -- 
> An example for how to set the it to use the Hebrew dictionary is:
> 
>     (require 'ispell)
> 
>     ;; Tell emacs what constitutes a word.
>     (add-to-list 'ispell-dictionary-alist
>                  '("hebrew8"
>                    "[a-zA-Z\340-\372]"                 ;Latin and Hebrew
>                    "[^a-zA-Z\340-\372]"
>                    "['\"]" t ("-B") nil iso-8859-8))   ;Hebrew charset
> 
>     (setq ispell-dictionary "hebrew8")
>     (ispell-change-dictionary "hebrew8")
>     (set-default 'ispell-local-dictionary "hebrew8")
> 
>     ;; Adding the Hebrew dictionary to ispell menu
>     (if (fboundp 'define-key-after)
>         (define-key-after ispell-menu-map [ispell-select-hebrew8]
>           '("Select Hebrew8 Dict" . (lambda()
>                                       (interactive)
>                                       (ispell-change-dictionary "hebrew8")))
>           'american))

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately it didn't help me as I was
looking specifically for help with aspell (and *not* ispell). The
greek dictionaries for ispell are outdated and I can't make them to
work with ispell anyway :(. There are greek dictionaries for aspell
and they work pretty good, so I wanted to use them in emacs.

I tried the solution you propose and it didn't work. The name of the
greek dictionary is "el" so when I tried your solution when I try to 
spell check a buffer I get 


  Starting new Ispell process... 
  ispell-init-process: Error: The file "/usr/lib/aspell/el" is not in
  the proper format.

Now the funny thing is that after that if I evaluate

     (setq ispell-dictionary "american")
     (ispell-change-dictionary "american")
     (set-default 'ispell-local-dictionary "american") 
 
and try to ispell a buffer I get a very similar message

  Starting new Ispell process...
  ispell-init-process: Error: The file
  "/usr/lib/aspell/english-med-only" is not in the proper format.

However if, instead, I use the menu and select the default dictionary
everything works just fine. When I do the same with the "el"
dictionary, ie if I set it to be the default and then select "default"
from the menu, I get an other error message

  ispell-process-line: Ispell misalignment: word `Faut' point 722;
  probably incompatible versions
 
Probably I am doing something stupid. 

Thanks anyway
N.A.
-- 
Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
    -- Neon Absentius
absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Re: aspell and emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 22:43:23 +0000
> From: Neon Absentius <absent@sdf.lonestar.org>
> 
> Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately it didn't help me as I was
> looking specifically for help with aspell (and *not* ispell). The
> greek dictionaries for ispell are outdated and I can't make them to
> work with ispell anyway :(. There are greek dictionaries for aspell
> and they work pretty good, so I wanted to use them in emacs.
> 
> I tried the solution you propose and it didn't work. The name of the
> greek dictionary is "el" so when I tried your solution when I try to 
> spell check a buffer I get 
> 
> 
>   Starting new Ispell process... 
>   ispell-init-process: Error: The file "/usr/lib/aspell/el" is not in
>   the proper format.

Please provide a more complete description of your ispell.el setup, in
particular how did you tell ispell.el to invoke aspell instead of the
default ispell.  (IIRC, aspell comes with a shell script called
"ispell" that makes aspell more compatible with ispell; did you try
using that script?)

Btw, it's possible that I missed something, but I cannot find the
error message like the above anywhere in ispell.el.  Can you trace
where it is coming from?

Re: aspell and emacs

[Ehud Karni]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 22:43:23 +0000, Neon Absentius <absent@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
>
> Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately it didn't help me as I was
> looking specifically for help with aspell (and *not* ispell). The
> greek dictionaries for ispell are outdated and I can't make them to
> work with ispell anyway :(. There are greek dictionaries for aspell
> and they work pretty good, so I wanted to use them in emacs.

I work with aspell too (it is called from hspell). The `ispell' is
the emacs package, not the external program.

You have to add:
    (setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
and everything will be OK (I hope).

> I tried the solution you propose and it didn't work. The name of the
> greek dictionary is "el" so when I tried your solution when I try to
> spell check a buffer I get
>
>
>   Starting new Ispell process...
>   ispell-init-process: Error: The file "/usr/lib/aspell/el" is not in
>   the proper format.
>
> Now the funny thing is that after that if I evaluate
>
>      (setq ispell-dictionary "american")
>      (ispell-change-dictionary "american")
>      (set-default 'ispell-local-dictionary "american")
>
> and try to ispell a buffer I get a very similar message
>
>   Starting new Ispell process...
>   ispell-init-process: Error: The file
>   "/usr/lib/aspell/english-med-only" is not in the proper format.
>
> However if, instead, I use the menu and select the default dictionary
> everything works just fine. When I do the same with the "el"
> dictionary, ie if I set it to be the default and then select "default"
> from the menu, I get an other error message
>
>   ispell-process-line: Ispell misalignment: word `Faut' point 722;
>   probably incompatible versions
>
> Probably I am doing something stupid.

It seems to me you work with the `ispell' program with the `aspell'
dictionaries.

ehud.


--
 Ehud Karni           Tel: +972-3-7966-561  /"\
 Mivtach - Simon      Fax: +972-3-7966-667  \ /  ASCII Ribbon Campaign
 Insurance agencies   (USA) voice mail and   X   Against   HTML   Mail
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Re: aspell and emacs, SOLVED

[Neon Absentius]

Ok, I now I understand what was wrong. I had a broken aspell
installation which worked for certain options (for example --lang el)
but not with the option that ispell.el sends.  The error messages were
from aspell itself.  The replies by ehud and Eli Zaretskii made me
look further and unearth the misconfiguration. Now aspell is working
fine with or without emacs.

Thanks for your help.
 
For future reference here are the details.
Similarly to ehud I evaluate 

(setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
    (add-to-list 'ispell-dictionary-alist
                 '("el"
                   "[a-zA-Z``A_long_list_of_octal_characters'']"                 
                   "[^a-zA-Z``A_long_list_of_octal_characters'']"
                   "['\"]" t ("latin/greek") nil iso-8859-7))

    (setq ispell-dictionary "el")
    (ispell-change-dictionary "el")
    (set-default 'ispell-local-dictionary "el")

where ``A_long_list_of_octal_characters'' is a list of all characters
used by modern greek. I generated the list by evaluating


(insert                        
      (mapconcat (lambda (c) (format "\\%o" (multibyte-char-to-unibyte
      c))) 
                 "List_of_greek_characters"))

where I typed the "List_of_greek_characters" using the input-method
"greek" from Mule. (I found this in Emacs Wiki).

If anybody wants to have the list of octals itself I can provide it.

-- 
Charity in capitalism is like urinating to extinguish a forest fire.
    -- Neon Absentius
absent a.in.cirle sdf period lonestar period org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org