bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Van Ly]

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M-$ or ispell-word works by default but C-M-i or ispell-complete-word fails.

Steps to reproduce the error
 - emacs -Q
 - C-x b xxx
 - M-x text-mode
 +
 - type "ju"
 - C-M-i ;;=> causes the echo area to say the following

> ispell-lookup-words: lookup-words error: No plain word-list found at
> systemdefault locations.  Customize ‘ispell-alternate-dictionary’ to
> set yours.

The unexpected behavior is the above error shown in the *Messages* buffer.

The expected behavior is similar to the result from M-$ or ispell-word providing a list of options to choose.

A workaround I have found is as follows
 - at the shell command line
 - $ aspell -l en dump master > en-word-list
 - $ sort en-word-list > en-sorted-word-list
 +
 - customize:ispell-complete-word-dict to read the file "path/to/en-sorted-word-list"
 - C-M-i on "ju" then generates a listing of word options

See attached file bug-gnu-emacs--report.text


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In GNU Emacs 29.0.60 (build 1, aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
 3.24.24, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2023-01-19 built on x23
Repository revision: faee7e1f1bd0167e455a0e1e5fe02e21d23fd77f
Repository branch: emacs-29
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12011000
System Description: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)

Configured features:
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Major mode: Messages

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Load-path shadows:
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bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2023 12:48:13 GMT
> From: Van Ly <van.ly@sdf.org>
> 
> M-$ or ispell-word works by default but C-M-i or ispell-complete-word fails.
> 
> Steps to reproduce the error
>  - emacs -Q
>  - C-x b xxx
>  - M-x text-mode
>  +
>  - type "ju"
>  - C-M-i ;;=> causes the echo area to say the following
> 
> > ispell-lookup-words: lookup-words error: No plain word-list found at
> > systemdefault locations.  Customize ‘ispell-alternate-dictionary’ to
> > set yours.
> 
> The unexpected behavior is the above error shown in the *Messages* buffer.

What is your value of ispell-alternate-dictionary?  I'm guessing it's
nil, in which case the error message tells you what to do.

I don't know whether modern Posix systems have a word-list file in
some standard location installed; if they do, and that place is not
looked up by the initialization of ispell-alternate-dictionary, we
could add those other places to the list of standard locations.  But
if the word-list file is generally not installed, then I think the
error message is to be expected.

I've now added the fact that a word-list file is necessary for
ispell-complete-word to work to the command's doc string.  I don't
think we should or can do anything else about it.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Van Ly]

> > The unexpected behavior is the above error shown in the *Messages* buffer.
> 
> What is your value of ispell-alternate-dictionary?  I'm guessing it's
> nil, in which case the error message tells you what to do.

I was put off there by the fact it asks for a file and not the
dictionary program which could either be ispell or aspell or hunspell.

I gave up with that option and went looking for a word list file
reverse mapping to a package that provides it.  What I found was
confusion as to which package provides the en wordlist.

> I don't know whether modern Posix systems have a word-list file in
> some standard location installed; if they do, and that place is not
> looked up by the initialization of ispell-alternate-dictionary, we
> could add those other places to the list of standard locations.  But
> if the word-list file is generally not installed, then I think the
> error message is to be expected.

On debian, "apt-cache search wordlist" has results in addition to the
accompanying packages for language to aspell.

> I've now added the fact that a word-list file is necessary for
> ispell-complete-word to work to the command's doc string.  I don't
> think we should or can do anything else about it.

From a user's perspective ispell-word and ispell-complete-word feel as
though they are facets of the one thing.  Ideally, if one aspect of
ispell works the rest should.

Emacs 29.0.90 has this undesirable behavior for ispell-complete-word.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2023 15:31:35 GMT
> From: Van Ly <van.ly@sdf.org>
> Cc: 62775@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > I've now added the fact that a word-list file is necessary for
> > ispell-complete-word to work to the command's doc string.  I don't
> > think we should or can do anything else about it.
> 
> From a user's perspective ispell-word and ispell-complete-word feel as
> though they are facets of the one thing.  Ideally, if one aspect of
> ispell works the rest should.

Well, "should" is the wrong expectation for a feature that depends on
additional data files, especially since modern Posix installations
decided to remove that file (it used to be available on all the
systems when ispell.el was written).  The fact that this feature
depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.

So I think we have done everything we can about this issue, and I'm
therefore closing this bug.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Van Ly]

                                     > The fact that this feature
> depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.

The package "aspell-en" has what looks like cwl=>"compressed wordlist"
located at

/usr/share/aspell/en-*.cwl.gz

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:02:08 GMT
> From: Van Ly <van.ly@sdf.org>
> Cc: 62775-done@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> 
> 
>                                      > The fact that this feature
> > depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.
> 
> The package "aspell-en" has what looks like cwl=>"compressed wordlist"
> located at
> 
> /usr/share/aspell/en-*.cwl.gz

If it's compressed, we'd need to uncompress it before using.  Patches
to add that are welcome.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Agustin Martin]

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El mar, 11 abr 2023 a las 20:03, Van Ly (<van.ly@sdf.org>) escribió:

>                                      > The fact that this feature
> > depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.
>
> The package "aspell-en" has what looks like cwl=>"compressed wordlist"
> located at
>
> /usr/share/aspell/en-*.cwl.gz
>

I wonder if there is something like /usr/share/dict/words (or
/usr/share/dict/american-english) in your box. It should contain the
classical plain wordlist unix boxes expect.

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bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Agustin Martin <agustin6martin@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:50:38 +0200
> 
> El mar, 11 abr 2023 a las 20:03, Van Ly (<van.ly@sdf.org>) escribió:
> 
>                                       > The fact that this feature
>  > depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.
> 
>  The package "aspell-en" has what looks like cwl=>"compressed wordlist"
>  located at
> 
>  /usr/share/aspell/en-*.cwl.gz
> 
> I wonder if there is something like /usr/share/dict/words (or /usr/share/dict/american-english) in your
> box. It should contain the classical plain wordlist unix boxes expect.

I guess not, because if such files were present, ispell.el ought to
have found them, as it looks in those locations when it initializes
ispell-alternate-dictionary, and the problem wouldn't have happened in
the first place.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Van Ly]

> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2023 09:08:16 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Cc: van.ly@sdf.org, 62775@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > From: Agustin Martin <agustin6martin@gmail.com>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:50:38 +0200
> > 
> > El mar, 11 abr 2023 a las 20:03, Van Ly (<van.ly@sdf.org>) escribió:
> > 
> >                                       > The fact that this feature
> >  > depends on additional file is now mentioned in the doc string.
> > 
> >  The package "aspell-en" has what looks like cwl=>"compressed wordlist"
> >  located at
> > 
> >  /usr/share/aspell/en-*.cwl.gz
> > 
> > I wonder if there is something like /usr/share/dict/words (or /usr/share/dict/american-english) in your
> > box. It should contain the classical plain wordlist unix boxes expect.

I upgraded from the Intel x86 Mac Mini, it had the words file from a
time before Apple decided to weedout GNU free software after
Steve Jobs departed.

Plan9 userspace provides plan9/lib/words which Emacs can find in /usr.

> I guess not, because if such files were present, ispell.el ought to
> have found them, as it looks in those locations when it initializes
> ispell-alternate-dictionary, and the problem wouldn't have happened in
> the first place.
> 

The command aspell is using the 'ispell -a' compatibility mode, I
guess, the ispell-complete-word could call the aspell command for

  munch  Generate possible root words and affixes from an input  list  of
         words.

bug#62775: 29.0.60; C-M-i or ispell-complete-word experiences "lookup-words error"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2023 17:51:31 GMT
> From: Van Ly <van.ly@sdf.org>
> Cc: agustin6martin@gmail.com, 62775@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> The command aspell is using the 'ispell -a' compatibility mode, I
> guess, the ispell-complete-word could call the aspell command for
> 
>   munch  Generate possible root words and affixes from an input  list  of
>          words.

That is _definitely_ not what you want.  The output of munch is not a
list of words suitable for ispell-complete-word.