[newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Hello,
I have this problem:
I write something in italian language like word "perché".
Now with ispell/aspell/flyspell and several debian versions of emacs21 it
says that: PERCH is unrecognized word and suggests perché as correction.
So now I have PERCHéé on screen and it says again that PERCH is an
unrecognized word.
I have searched on internet but I have not yet found a solution.
I need "simple" commands to:

- set right mule options in emacs for italian
- right options for auctex
- right options for ispell/aspell/flyspell

Thanks in advance for any reply!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it>
> Newsgroups: comp.emacs,gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 17:28:39 GMT
> 
> Now with ispell/aspell/flyspell and several debian versions of emacs21 it
> says that: PERCH is unrecognized word and suggests perche' as correction.

I suspect this is because your locale sets Emacs up to use Latin-9
encoding, while Ispell's dictionary is encoded in Latin-1.  Current
released versions of Emacs see Latin-1 and Latin-9 as different
characters, sigh...

The solution is to find and install an Italian dictionary that is
encoded in Latin-9.  Alas, I don't know if and where such a beast
exists.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Ole Laursen]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

> The solution is to find and install an Italian dictionary that is
> encoded in Latin-9.  Alas, I don't know if and where such a beast
> exists.

Perhaps iconv can help.

  iconv --help

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Now with ispell/aspell/flyspell and several debian versions of emacs21 it
>> says that: PERCH is unrecognized word and suggests perche' as correction.

> I suspect this is because your locale sets Emacs up to use Latin-9
> encoding, while Ispell's dictionary is encoded in Latin-1.  Current
> released versions of Emacs see Latin-1 and Latin-9 as different
> characters, sigh...

Probably indeed.

> The solution is to find and install an Italian dictionary that is
> encoded in Latin-9.  Alas, I don't know if and where such a beast
> exists.

That wouldn't help, since at the level of ispell, latin-1 and latin-9
are pretty much indistinguishable: unless some word uses one of the few
chars that are different, a latin-1 dict *is* a latin-9 dict as well.

The problem might rather be that Emacs thinks that latin-9 letters are not
part of ispell-words so it cuts the words wrong.  I don't really know enough
about ispell-dictionary-alist (it seems to use "unibyte" chars) and/or
flyspell to know what to do, tho.

Mario, what is your locale and have do you see the problem only with
flyspell ?  What about M-x ispell-region and M-x ispell-word ?


        Stefan

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> Now with ispell/aspell/flyspell and several debian versions of emacs21 it
>> says that: PERCH is unrecognized word and suggests perche' as correction.
> 
> I suspect this is because your locale sets Emacs up to use Latin-9
> encoding, 
> The solution is to find and install an Italian dictionary that is
> encoded in Latin-9. 

Can I change my locale to use latin-1 ?

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Stefan Monnier wrote:


> The problem might rather be that Emacs thinks that latin-9 letters are not
> part of ispell-words so it cuts the words wrong.  I don't really know
> enough about ispell-dictionary-alist (it seems to use "unibyte" chars)
> and/or flyspell to know what to do, tho.
> 
> Mario, what is your locale and have do you see the problem only with
> flyspell ?  What about M-x ispell-region and M-x ispell-word ?

Interesting! ispell-region works, but ispell-word see only "perch"

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Kai Großjohann]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

> I suspect this is because your locale sets Emacs up to use Latin-9
> encoding, while Ispell's dictionary is encoded in Latin-1.  Current
> released versions of Emacs see Latin-1 and Latin-9 as different
> characters, sigh...

It's fairly easy to fool ispell.  I use the following kludge:

(require 'ispell)
(add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
	     '("ndeutsch8-15"
	       "[a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
	       "[^a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
	       "[']" t
	       ("-C" "-d" "ndeutsch")
	       "~latin1" iso-8859-15))

I took the ndeutsch8 entry and modified it slightly.  Note that the
next-to-last item still says "~latin1", and the ispell dictionary
name still says "ndeutsch", but the last item in the list is now
iso-8859-15 instead of iso-8859-1.
-- 
This line is not blank.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:
>
>> I suspect this is because your locale sets Emacs up to use Latin-9
>> encoding, while Ispell's dictionary is encoded in Latin-1.  Current
>> released versions of Emacs see Latin-1 and Latin-9 as different
>> characters, sigh...
>
> It's fairly easy to fool ispell.  I use the following kludge:
>
> (require 'ispell)
> (add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
> 	     '("ndeutsch8-15"
> 	       "[a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
> 	       "[^a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
> 	       "[']" t
> 	       ("-C" "-d" "ndeutsch")
> 	       "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
>
> I took the ndeutsch8 entry and modified it slightly.  Note that the
> next-to-last item still says "~latin1", and the ispell dictionary
> name still says "ndeutsch", but the last item in the list is now
> iso-8859-15 instead of iso-8859-1.
[...]

I suspect (but have not tested it) that if the OP replaces the two
regexps with "[[:alpha:]]" and "[^[:alpha:]]" respectively, it could
work right of the box with Italian, too.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

>>
>> It's fairly easy to fool ispell.  I use the following kludge:
>>
>> (require 'ispell)
>> (add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
>> '("ndeutsch8-15"
>> "[a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
>> "[^a-zA-Z\xf44\xf56\xf5c\xf5f\xf64\xf76\xf7c]"
>> "[']" t
>> ("-C" "-d" "ndeutsch")
>> "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
>>

> 
> I suspect (but have not tested it) that if the OP replaces the two
> regexps with "[[:alpha:]]" and "[^[:alpha:]]" respectively, it could
> work right of the box with Italian, too.


So where I have to put this thing? I have to modify it?

BTW: I tried ispell without emacs and it shows strange things: 

perchè is perchM-i

So I have tried aspell and it works, I am trying to use aspell with emacs
but there it does not find LANG=it_IT and so it uses american dictionary.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:
[...]
>> I suspect (but have not tested it) that if the OP replaces the two
>> regexps with "[[:alpha:]]" and "[^[:alpha:]]" respectively, it could
>> work right of the box with Italian, too.
>
>
> So where I have to put this thing? I have to modify it?

Please try to put this into your .emacs (untested!):

(add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
	     '("italianx"
	       "[[:alpha:]]"
	       "[^[:alpha:]]"
	       "[']" t
	       ("-C" "-d" "<italian-dictionary>")
	       "~latin1" iso-8859-15))

(setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")

But replace <italian-dictionary> with the name of the Italian
dictionary on your system.

> BTW: I tried ispell without emacs and it shows strange things: 
>
> perchè is perchM-i

What does that mean? Did you run ispell from a shell?

> So I have tried aspell and it works, I am trying to use aspell with emacs
> but there it does not find LANG=it_IT and so it uses american dictionary.

I don't know aspell. I can't help you here.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
> 
>> Oliver Scholz wrote:
> [...]
>>> I suspect (but have not tested it) that if the OP replaces the two
>>> regexps with "[[:alpha:]]" and "[^[:alpha:]]" respectively, it could
>>> work right of the box with Italian, too.
>>
>>
>> So where I have to put this thing? I have to modify it?
> 
> Please try to put this into your .emacs (untested!):
> 
> (add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
> '("italianx"
> "[[:alpha:]]"
> "[^[:alpha:]]"
> "[']" t
> ("-C" "-d" "<italian-dictionary>")
> "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
> 
> (setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")
> 
> But replace <italian-dictionary> with the name of the Italian
> dictionary on your system.
> 
I am doing something wrong I suppose because when I start flyspell it asks
for /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash and similar (it seems to ignore -d
italian)


>> BTW: I tried ispell without emacs and it shows strange things:
>>
>> perchè is perchM-i
> 
> What does that mean? Did you run ispell from a shell?

Yes I ran it on a shell.

Thanks again for interest.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:

[code]

>> But replace <italian-dictionary> with the name of the Italian
>> dictionary on your system.
>> 
> I am doing something wrong I suppose because when I start flyspell it asks
> for /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash and similar (it seems to ignore -d
> italian)

Well, it's possible that you did something wrong. But what exactly
did you do?

To test, what I have suggested, I have downloaded an Italian
dictionary for my GNU/Linux system now, installed it and put the stuff
I posted previously into my .emacs, thereby replacing
"<italian-dictionary>" with "italian". (This is Debian stable.) I then
set my language environment to "Latin-9"[1], visited a new file,
inserted perché and did `M-x flyspell-mode RET'.

Perfect. Works as expected. No problems.

So what is your operating system? What did you put into your .emacs?
Is there any other stuff w.r.t. ispell in you configuration?

>>> BTW: I tried ispell without emacs and it shows strange things:
>>>
>>> perchè is perchM-i
>> 
>> What does that mean? Did you run ispell from a shell?
>
> Yes I ran it on a shell.
[...]

Sorry, I can't reproduce this. My language environment outside of
Emacs is serverly messed up (I never cared about it ...). Maybe
somebody else has a clue.

    Oliver

Footnotes: 
[1]  Uh, oh, Karma-lossage ...

-- 
14 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:


>> I am doing something wrong I suppose because when I start flyspell it
>> asks for /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash and similar (it seems to ignore -d
>> italian)

> To test, what I have suggested, I have downloaded an Italian
> dictionary for my GNU/Linux system now, installed it and put the stuff
> I posted previously into my .emacs, thereby replacing
> "<italian-dictionary>" with "italian". (This is Debian stable.) I then
> set my language environment to "Latin-9"[1], visited a new file,
> inserted perché and did `M-x flyspell-mode RET'.
> 
> Perfect. Works as expected. No problems.
> 
Me too I have done the same thing. when I do flyspell-mode it says error
/usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash not found.

I use debian unstable, but installed stable emacs.
Now I recheck all configuration, make some tests and post the results.

Please tell me if Latin-9 is a mule option in menu. 

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

 (This is Debian stable.)

By the way: in debian bug tracking system is filed a bug from more than a
year about problems with emacs ispell and accent recognition.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
[...]
> Me too I have done the same thing. when I do flyspell-mode it says error
> /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash not found.

Please post the code that you added to you .emacs.

[There could be a typo, for example.]

> I use debian unstable, but installed stable emacs.

Which version is that?

[...]
> Please tell me if Latin-9 is a mule option in menu. 

I don't understand. What do you want to do?

    Oliver
-- 
14 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>  (This is Debian stable.)
>
> By the way: in debian bug tracking system is filed a bug from more than a
> year about problems with emacs ispell and accent recognition.

I don't know, at least it didn't affect my setup.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
> [...]
>> Me too I have done the same thing. when I do flyspell-mode it says error
>> /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash not found.
> 
> Please post the code that you added to you .emacs.
> 

if I use this .emacs:

(add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
             '("italianx"
               "[[:alpha:]]"
               "[^[:alpha:]]"
               "[']" t
               ("-C" "-d" "italian")
               "~latin1" iso-8859-15))

(setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")

I obtain at the start of emacs this error: Symbol value as variable is void

So I modified to this .emacs:

'(ispell-local-dictionary-alist
             '("italianx"
               "[[:alpha:]]"
               "[^[:alpha:]]"
               "[']" t
               ("-C" "-d" "italian")
               "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
                                                                                                                                                                                  
(setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")

Now emacs works but when I start flyspell I got:

can't open /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash^M

> 
>> I use debian unstable, but installed stable emacs.
> 
> Which version is that?
> 

GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (i386-debian-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of
2002-03-22 on raven, modified by Debian

> [...]
>> Please tell me if Latin-9 is a mule option in menu.
> 
> I don't understand. What do you want to do?
> 
Look in my other post

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:


> To test, what I have suggested, I have downloaded an Italian
> dictionary for my GNU/Linux system now, installed it and put the stuff
> I posted previously into my .emacs, thereby replacing
> "<italian-dictionary>" with "italian". (This is Debian stable.) I then
> set my language environment to "Latin-9"[1], visited a new file,
> inserted perché and did `M-x flyspell-mode RET'.
> 
How do you change environment to Latin-9? Is the mule menu?

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:
[...]
>> I then set my language environment to "Latin-9"
[...]
> How do you change environment to Latin-9? Is the mule menu?

I did it with 

(set-language-environment "Latin-1")

in my .emacs.

    Oliver
-- 
15 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
>> [...]
>>> Me too I have done the same thing. when I do flyspell-mode it says error
>>> /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash not found.
>> 
>> Please post the code that you added to you .emacs.
>> 
>
> if I use this .emacs:
>
> (add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
>              '("italianx"
>                "[[:alpha:]]"
>                "[^[:alpha:]]"
>                "[']" t
>                ("-C" "-d" "italian")
>                "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
>
> (setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")

Yeah, that's how it should look like.

> I obtain at the start of emacs this error: Symbol value as variable is void

This error message is about the symbol
`ispell-local-dictionary-alist', I presume?

Very, very strange, it seems to be preloaded on my Emacs. Does it
work, if you put a

(require 'ispell)

immediately before the `(add-to-list ... )'?

> So I modified to this .emacs:
>
> '(ispell-local-dictionary-alist
>              '("italianx"
>                "[[:alpha:]]"
>                "[^[:alpha:]]"
>                "[']" t
>                ("-C" "-d" "italian")
>                "~latin1" iso-8859-15))

Aah, I suspected something like that. 

This expression is wrong. It doesn't give an error, of course, but in
fact it does absolutely nothing.

> (setq ispell-dictionary "italianx")
>
> Now emacs works but when I start flyspell I got:
>
> can't open /usr/lib/ispell/italianx.hash^M
[...]

That's because you have not really modified your dictionary-alist with
the expression you used. Unable to get advice from there how to deal
with "italianx", Emacs resorts to appending ".hash" to the value of
`ispell-dictionary' and hopes for the best. And fails.

Please, use the expression you posted first, the one which led to the
error message, but put a (require 'ispell) before it. We should try
to solve the problem indicated by the error message.


    Oliver
-- 
15 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:


>> I obtain at the start of emacs this error: Symbol value as variable is
>> void
> 
> This error message is about the symbol
> `ispell-local-dictionary-alist', I presume?
> 
> Very, very strange, it seems to be preloaded on my Emacs. Does it
> work, if you put a
> 
> (require 'ispell)
> 
> immediately before the `(add-to-list ... )'?
> 

I have put (require 'ispell) as you said but the error persists, this is the
backtrace:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable               )
  (add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)                (quote
("italianx"                  "[[:alpha:]]"                  "[^[:alpha:]]"                 
"[']"  t                  ...                  "~latin1"  iso-8859-15)))
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "~/.emacs" nil t)
  load-with-code-conversion("/home/giammarc/.emacs" "~/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[nil " 




> Aah, I suspected something like that.
> 
> This expression is wrong. It doesn't give an error, of course, but in
> fact it does absolutely nothing.
> 
Sigh I newer will be a lisp programmer :-(

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>
>>> I obtain at the start of emacs this error: Symbol value as variable is
>>> void
>> 
>> This error message is about the symbol
>> `ispell-local-dictionary-alist', I presume?
>> 
>> Very, very strange, it seems to be preloaded on my Emacs. Does it
>> work, if you put a
>> 
>> (require 'ispell)
>> 
>> immediately before the `(add-to-list ... )'?
>> 
>
> I have put (require 'ispell) as you said but the error persists, this is the
> backtrace:
>
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable               )
>   (add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)                (quote
[...]

Huh? This looks very, very wrong. Did you modify this backtrace
somehow? If not, then I am really puzzled. If
`ispell-local-dictionary-alist' is undefined (if that's the reason for
the error), then I'd expect to see something like

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable ispell-local-dictionary-alist)
  add-to-list(ispell-local-dictionary-alist ("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']" t ("-C" "-d" "italian") "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
[...]

... alright let's go about this methodically:

1) Please remove the `add-to-list' expression from your .emacs and
   start it as usual. Then type `M-x locate-library RET ispell RET'
   and post what you see in the echo area (messages are collected in a
   special buffer *Messages*, you can copy&paste the line from there).

   One possible reason why you Emacs behaves in a different way than
   mine could be that you have a second ispell.el library in your
   load-path which shadows the ispell.el that comes with Emacs. If
   that's the case, we'll find it out with `M-x locate-library'.


2) Please start Emacs from a command line like this:

   emacs -q --no-site-file

   This makes sure that Emacs does not load your configuration file,
   which makes sure that there is no other, unrelated problem that
   could interfere here.

   Then insert the `(add-to-list ... )' expression into the buffer
   named *scratch*. Move the cursor behind the last parenthesis and
   type `C-x C-e'. Do you get a similar error? If so, please post the
   whole backtrace (per copy&past) and then try to replace
   `ispell-local-dictionary-alist' with `ispell-dictionary-alist':

(add-to-list 'ispell-dictionary-alist
	     '("italianx"
	       "[[:alpha:]]"
	       "[^[:alpha:]]"
	       "[']" t
	       ("-C" "-d" "italian")
	       "~latin1" iso-8859-15))

   Again, put point behind the last parenthesis and hit `C-x C-e'. Do
   you get an error then, too?

>> Aah, I suspected something like that.
>> 
>> This expression is wrong. It doesn't give an error, of course, but in
>> fact it does absolutely nothing.
>> 
> Sigh I newer will be a lisp programmer :-(

If everything is alright, you normally shouldn't have to expose
yourself to Lisp in order to use Emacs. Unfortunately sometimes things
go wrong as in your case.

Personally I found Lisp very easy as my first programming language. I
think, if you already know other programming languages, you could
have slightly more problems with it, because it is so very different,
constituting a whole family of its own.

In case, you are interested: here are some very simplified notes
about Lisp-expressions:

(symbol ....)

This expression calls a function named `symbol'. Everything else
inside the parentheses is passed as an argument to the function
`symbol'.

'(symbol ...)

This expression is just a list with the symbol `symbol' as its first
element. No function call takes place, because of the `''. That is:
the expression is _quoted_.

symbol

This symbol is treated as the name of a variable. The Lisp
interpreter evaluates it and uses its value.

'symbol

This symbol is quoted. The Lisp interpreter uses the symbol
itself. (Symbols are a special data type in Lisp.)

Now this stuff works together recursively:

(symbol-1 'symbol-2              ; First argument
	  symbol-3               ; Second argument
	  (symbol-4)             ; Third argument
	  '(symbol-5 symbol-6))  ; Fourth argument

This calls the _function_ symbol-1 with four arguments: 1) The symbol
symbol-2, 2) the value of the variable `symbol-3'. 3) To get the third
argument, the Lisp interpreter calls the _function_ `symbol-4'
(without arguments), its return value is after that used as the third
argument for the function `symbol-1'. 4) A list with the symbols
`symbol-5' and `symbol-6' as its elements.

I hope, I didn't introduce more confusion. Don't worry. Even if you
don't know Lisp: I do. Just make sure, that you post _exactly_ what
you do.

    Oliver
-- 
15 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
> 
>> Oliver Scholz wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> I obtain at the start of emacs this error: Symbol value as variable is
>>>> void
>>> 
>>> This error message is about the symbol
>>> `ispell-local-dictionary-alist', I presume?
>>> 
>>> Very, very strange, it seems to be preloaded on my Emacs. Does it
>>> work, if you put a
>>> 
>>> (require 'ispell)
>>> 
>>> immediately before the `(add-to-list ... )'?
>>> 
>>
>> I have put (require 'ispell) as you said but the error persists, this is
>> the backtrace:
>>
>> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable               )
>>   (add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)               
>>   (quote
> [...]
> 
> Huh? This looks very, very wrong. Did you modify this backtrace
> somehow?

NO, cut and paste


> ... alright let's go about this methodically:
> 
> 1) Please remove the `add-to-list' expression from your .emacs and
>    start it as usual. Then type `M-x locate-library RET ispell RET'
>    and post what you see in the echo area (messages are collected in a
>    special buffer *Messages*, you can copy&paste the line from there).
> 
>    One possible reason why you Emacs behaves in a different way than
>    mine could be that you have a second ispell.el library in your
>    load-path which shadows the ispell.el that comes with Emacs. If
>    that's the case, we'll find it out with `M-x locate-library'.
> 

I have done it and it seems that it is in the right place where debian puts
it.
This evening I will do a apt-get --purge remove emacs bla bla and reinstall
it
> 
> 2) Please start Emacs from a command line like this:
> 
>    emacs -q --no-site-file
> 
>    This makes sure that Emacs does not load your configuration file,
>    which makes sure that there is no other, unrelated problem that
>    could interfere here.
> 
>    Then insert the `(add-to-list ... )' expression into the buffer
>    named *scratch*. Move the cursor behind the last parenthesis and
>    type `C-x C-e'. Do you get a similar error? If so, please post the
>    whole backtrace (per copy&past) 

I HAVE NOT MODIFIED ANYTHING, SIMPLE COPY AND PASTE!


Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable              )
  (add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)               (quote
("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
 iso-8859-15)))
  eval((add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)              
(quote ("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
 iso-8859-15))))
  eval-last-sexp-1(nil)
  eval-last-sexp(nil)
  call-interactively(eval-last-sexp)


>    `ispell-local-dictionary-alist' with `ispell-dictionary-alist':
> 
> (add-to-list 'ispell-dictionary-alist
> '("italianx"
> "[[:alpha:]]"
> "[^[:alpha:]]"
> "[']" t
> ("-C" "-d" "italian")
> "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
> 
>    Again, put point behind the last parenthesis and hit `C-x C-e'. Do
>    you get an error then, too?

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable              )
  (add-to-list (quote ispell-dictionary-alist)               (quote
("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
 iso-8859-15)))
  eval((add-to-list (quote ispell-dictionary-alist)               (quote
("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
 iso-8859-15))))
  eval-last-sexp-1(nil)
  eval-last-sexp(nil)
  call-interactively(eval-last-sexp)
  recursive-edit()
  byte-code("Æ !ˆÇ ˆÈ   !ˆ\nƒ?

HERE CUT AND PASTE DOES NOT WORK CAUSE COMPILED LISP

> 
>>> Aah, I suspected something like that.
>>> 
>>> This expression is wrong. It doesn't give an error, of course, but in
>>> fact it does absolutely nothing.
>>> 
>> Sigh I newer will be a lisp programmer :-(
> 
> If everything is alright, you normally shouldn't have to expose
> yourself to Lisp in order to use Emacs. Unfortunately sometimes things
> go wrong as in your case.
> 
> Personally I found Lisp very easy as my first programming language. I
> think, if you already know other programming languages, you could
> have slightly more problems with it, because it is so very different,
> constituting a whole family of its own.
> 

Thanks for the lisp mini tutorial!
But anyway I would like to know also emacs-lisp "api" to make my own
beautiful macros...

Because a programmer must know how to program is editor...
Perhaps one day I will have time to learn!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable               )

I'd guess that something somewhere is introducing latin-N unbreakable spaces
(code 160) instead of plain old normal spaces (code 32).


        Stefan

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
[...]
> I HAVE NOT MODIFIED ANYTHING, SIMPLE COPY AND PASTE!

O.k., o.k., o.k., sorry ... :-)

> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable              )
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>   (add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)               (quote
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
>  iso-8859-15)))
>   eval((add-to-list (quote ispell-local-dictionary-alist)              
> (quote ("italianx" "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "[']"  t ... "~latin1"
>  iso-8859-15))))
>   eval-last-sexp-1(nil)
>   eval-last-sexp(nil)
>   call-interactively(eval-last-sexp)

I am lost here, I'm afraid. :-( I have never seen this before. It
looks as if Emacs treats the whitespace between `(quote
ispell-l-d-a)' and `(quote ("italianx" ...' as a symbol.

Does anybody here have a clue what this could be? Is it even
conceivable that something causes such a bug in the Lisp reader?

Hmm, except ... hmmm. This is just a wild guess: When you copied and
pasted the code from you newsreader into Emacs -- is it possible that
one or more of the spaces and tabs were replaced with
Unicode-whitespace characters from the range U+2000 to U+200F? This is
the only case I know of that whitespace is treated as a symbol by the
Lisp-reader. Could you make sure that everything between
'ispell-local-dictionary-alist and '("italianx" ...) is either a
space (ASCII-codepoint: 32), a tab (9) or a newline (10)? You can
check this with `C-x ='. It is sufficient, if there is just a single
space character in between.

But, as I said: this is just a very wild guess.

[...]
> Thanks for the lisp mini tutorial!
> But anyway I would like to know also emacs-lisp "api" to make my own
> beautiful macros...

In that case you should take my explanation with a grain of salt. It
was meant to enable a programmer used to Algol-like languages to make
some more or less educated guesses when exposed to a Lisp expression,
no more.

> Because a programmer must know how to program is editor...
> Perhaps one day I will have time to learn!

That's the spirit. Beware, it's addicting. 

When you find the time to do it, have a look at the "Introduction to
Emacs Lisp" (elisp-intro) and the "Emacs Lisp Reference Manual", you
can get both as Texinfo from ftp.gnu.org. 

    Oliver
-- 
15 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Oliver Scholz wrote:

> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
> [...]
>> I HAVE NOT MODIFIED ANYTHING, SIMPLE COPY AND PASTE!
> 
> O.k., o.k., o.k., sorry ... :-)
> 
Obviously I shout not to offend you but just to be clear but..............

it was not a good idea to cut and paste!!!!!!!

Infact....


> Unicode-whitespace characters from the range U+2000 to U+200F? This is
> the only case I know of that whitespace is treated as a symbol by the
> Lisp-reader. 
> But, as I said: this is just a very wild guess.
> 

BINGO!

now it almost works

it gives me an error "invalid coding system iso-8859-15"
I have tried also iso-8859-1 now I will do other tries

> [...]
>> Thanks for the lisp mini tutorial!
>> But anyway I would like to know also emacs-lisp "api" to make my own
>> beautiful macros...
> 
> In that case you should take my explanation with a grain of salt. It
> was meant to enable a programmer used to Algol-like languages to make
> some more or less educated guesses when exposed to a Lisp expression,
> no more.

I confess you that years ago I studied lisp in a AI course.
My best program was a 8 queen solver.
I took an example of prof or book or in internet I do not remember with 4
goto, but in my mind it was not an example of functional programming...
I rewrited it (with a lot of pain) in a self modifyng lisp code (the main
function build and returned a (function) to itself. If the (function) had
some code in it it executed the code, it it was empty the program had
finished).
The professor liked my code, but then I forgot lisp and "'" "quote" and
other things 
> 

> When you find the time to do it, have a look at the "Introduction to
> Emacs Lisp" (elisp-intro) and the "Emacs Lisp Reference Manual", you
> can get both as Texinfo from ftp.gnu.org.
> 
Perhaps 10 years ago these things were not in internet?

Any way it is 15 years that I am happy to use emacs to write my code.
I like it very much: syntax highlighting, follow mode, flyspell-mode (if it
works), etc etc etc

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

Mario Giammarco wrote:

> BINGO!
> 
> now it almost works
> 
> it gives me an error "invalid coding system iso-8859-15"
> I have tried also iso-8859-1 now I will do other tries
> 
I confirm this error
or the italianx.hash if I use ispell-dictionary-alist


I use --no-site-file.

Sigh...

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:

> Mario Giammarco wrote:
>
>> BINGO!
>> 
>> now it almost works
>> 
>> it gives me an error "invalid coding system iso-8859-15"
>> I have tried also iso-8859-1 now I will do other tries
>> 
> I confirm this error
[...]

When does that happen? When you turn on flyspell-mode with `M-x
flyspell-mode'.

Please, do `M-x toggle-debug-on-error RET' and try to get a
backtrace. It could be necessary to load ispell.el (i.e. _not_ the
.elc file) manually in order to get a readable backtrace.

    Oliver
-- 
16 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 23:32:19 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:

> Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nospam.supereva.it> writes:
> 
>> Mario Giammarco wrote:
>>
>>> BINGO!
>>> 
>>> now it almost works
>>> 
>>> it gives me an error "invalid coding system iso-8859-15"
>>> I have tried also iso-8859-1 now I will do other tries
>>> 
>> I confirm this error
> [...]
> 
> When does that happen? When you turn on flyspell-mode with `M-x
> flyspell-mode'.
> 
> Please, do `M-x toggle-debug-on-error RET' and try to get a
> backtrace. It could be necessary to load ispell.el (i.e. _not_ the
> .elc file) manually in order to get a readable backtrace.
> 

Well I did again apt-get --purge remove emacs21 emacsen-common ispell etc.
etc. etc.

Then I checked and removed all files and directories.

Now I reinstalled all.

I tried your lisp code and works (no errors).

But....

Even with your code perch é are 2 words.

Now I am writing this with pan news reader that uses aspell.
With italian dictionary it does not underline red perché because it
correctly recognises it.

I will try to substitute ispell with aspell.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Thu, 05 Jun 2003 12:01:39 +0000, Mario Giammarco wrote:
 
> Now I reinstalled all.
> 
> I tried your lisp code and works (no errors).
> 
> But....
> 
> Even with your code perch é are 2 words.
> 

> I will try to substitute ispell with aspell.

I have done some other checks with ispell AND aspell.

spell check the buffer works.

spell check single word does NOT work.

flyspell does not work because I suppose it spell checks single words.

Can I file a bug?

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nonspam.monrif.net> writes:
[...]
> I tried your lisp code and works (no errors).
>
> But....
>
> Even with your code perch é are 2 words.
[...]

Do you per chance have a unibyte buffer? This could be the case if you
have `(standard-display-european t)' somewhere in your configs. Please
put the cursor on an such an accented character and hit `C-u C-x ='.

    Oliver
-- 
18 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 00:21:13 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:

> 
> Do you per chance have a unibyte buffer? This could be the case if you
> have `(standard-display-european t)' somewhere in your configs. Please
> put the cursor on an such an accented character and hit `C-u C-x ='.
> 

This is reply, if you need more info tell me!

  character:  (04340, 2272, 0x8e0)
    charset: latin-iso8859-1 (Right-Hand Part of Latin Alphabet 1 (ISO/IEC 8859-1): ISO-IR-100)
 code point: 96
     syntax: word
   category: l:Latin  
buffer code: 0x81 0xE0
  file code: E0 (encoded by coding system iso-latin-1-unix)
       font: -Adobe-Courier-Medium-R-Normal--12-120-75-75-M-70-ISO8859-1

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 917 bytes --]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nonspam.monrif.net> writes:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 00:21:13 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>> 
>> Do you per chance have a unibyte buffer? This could be the case if you
>> have `(standard-display-european t)' somewhere in your configs. Please
>> put the cursor on an such an accented character and hit `C-u C-x ='.
>> 
>
> This is reply, if you need more info tell me!
>
>   character:  (04340, 2272, 0x8e0)
>     charset: latin-iso8859-1 (Right-Hand Part of Latin Alphabet 1 (ISO/IEC 8859-1): ISO-IR-100)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Didn't you mention that you have a Latin-9 locale?

I am really puzzled, and I have no idea what is going on on your
system. All I can say is that if I put this attached Elisp code into a
file "fl-test.el" on my Debian GNU/Linux and start Emacs from the
same directory with

emacs -q --no-site-file -l "fl-test.el"

Then everything works as expected.


[-- Attachment #2: fl-test.el --]
[-- Type: application/emacs-lisp, Size: 516 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 87 bytes --]



    Oliver
-- 
18 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

[-- Attachment #4: Type: text/plain, Size: 151 bytes --]

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Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 13:09:06 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:

>> This is reply, if you need more info tell me!
>>
>>   character:  (04340, 2272, 0x8e0)
>>     charset: latin-iso8859-1 (Right-Hand Part of Latin Alphabet 1 (ISO/IEC 8859-1): ISO-IR-100)
>                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> Didn't you mention that you have a Latin-9 locale?
> 
> I am really puzzled, and I have no idea what is going on on your
> system. All I can say is that if I put this attached Elisp code into a
> file "fl-test.el" on my Debian GNU/Linux and start Emacs from the
> same directory with
> 
> emacs -q --no-site-file -l "fl-test.el"
> 

Please tell me your export LANG and debian emacs version!

Thanks again.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 13:09:06 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:

>  All I can say is that if I put this attached Elisp code into a
> file "fl-test.el" on my Debian GNU/Linux and start Emacs from the
> same directory with
> 
> emacs -q --no-site-file -l "fl-test.el"
> 
> Then everything works as expected.

Just tried it does not work. I will do other tentatives and I will keep
you informed.

Thanks again for so much interest!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nonspam.monrif.net> writes:
[...]
> Please tell me your export LANG and debian emacs version!
[...]

My LANG variable should not affect this. My locale setup is severly
messed up anyways. I use Debian Woody with Emacs from the CVS. But I
doubt that this wouldn't work with Emacs 21.3.

Could please someone else test it and tell whether this works for him
or her?

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nonspam.monrif.net> writes:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 13:09:06 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>>  All I can say is that if I put this attached Elisp code into a
>> file "fl-test.el" on my Debian GNU/Linux and start Emacs from the
>> same directory with
>> 
>> emacs -q --no-site-file -l "fl-test.el"
>> 
>> Then everything works as expected.
>
> Just tried it does not work. I will do other tentatives and I will keep
> you informed.
[...]

Well, what happens? Could there be a problem with your newsreader,
again? I could send it to you gzipped via mail.

    Oliver
-- 
18 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 14:52:30 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:


>>> emacs -q --no-site-file -l "fl-test.el"
>>> 
>>> Then everything works as expected.
>>
>> Just tried it does not work. I will do other tentatives and I will keep
>> you informed.
> [...]
> 
> Well, what happens? Could there be a problem with your newsreader,
> again? I could send it to you gzipped via mail.
> 
The simplest thing happens: no errors script runs fine flyspell starts and
underlines with red PERCH but not é.

I have tried several LANG and they do not change anything on emacs.

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Oliver Scholz]

Mario Giammarco <mgiammarco@nonspam.monrif.net> writes:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 14:52:30 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:
[...]
>> Well, what happens? Could there be a problem with your newsreader,
>> again? I could send it to you gzipped via mail.
>> 
> The simplest thing happens: no errors script runs fine flyspell starts and
> underlines with red PERCH but not é.
[...]

*sigh* My girlfriend has a DSL line. I'll fech an Emacs 21.3 over the
weekend and see if I can reproduce this.

    Oliver
-- 
18 Prairial an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 15:40:09 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:

> *sigh* My girlfriend has a DSL line. I'll fech an Emacs 21.3 over the
> weekend and see if I can reproduce this.
> 

Please look at this before:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=+130397


and remember that ispell-buffer works ispell-word doesn't.

Thanks you very much!

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Reiner Steib]

On Fri, Jun 06 2003, Mario Giammarco wrote:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 15:40:09 +0200, Oliver Scholz wrote:
>
>> *sigh* My girlfriend has a DSL line. I'll fech an Emacs 21.3 over the
>> weekend and see if I can reproduce this.

Works fine here with Emacs 21.3 and `emacs -q -no-site-file -l
fl-test.el'.  (I changed to a Spanish version [1], because I don't have
Italian dictionaries installed.)

> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=+130397
> and remember that ispell-buffer works ispell-word doesn't.

Both work here (but I don't have Debian).

Bye, Reiner.

[1]
(add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist
	     '("espanolX"
	       "[[:alpha:]]"
	       "[^[:alpha:]]"
	       "[']" t
	       ("-C" "-d" "espanol")
	       "~latin1" iso-8859-15))
(setq ispell-dictionary "espanolX")
;; [...]
  (insert "señoraXYZ señora además ahora allí antes así cerca
después entonces hoy no pero quizás siempre sólo también todavía ya")
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: [newbie] emacs flyspell not understands well accented chars

[Mario Giammarco]

On Sat, 07 Jun 2003 12:16:18 +0200, Reiner Steib wrote:


> Works fine here with Emacs 21.3 and `emacs -q -no-site-file -l
> fl-test.el'.  (I changed to a Spanish version [1], because I don't have
> Italian dictionaries installed.)
> 
>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=+130397
>> and remember that ispell-buffer works ispell-word doesn't.
> 
> Both work here (but I don't have Debian).
> 



Sigh so why it does not work on mine?
Emacs on what libraries depends?
Libc can influence emacs behaviour?
What does debian modify in emacs?