Re: jinx

[Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 3:20 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> > From: Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org>
> > Cc: rms@gnu.org,  m.eliachevitch@posteo.de,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2023 21:35:25 +0200
> >
> > > (I wonder why the built-in TeX support in the spell-checker doesn't do
> > > this job, it's supposed to be adequate, and all Emacs needs to do is
> > > to tell the speller it is working on TeX text.  So I don't even
> > > understand why we need to skip something on our own in these cases.)
> >
> > I can only tell for hunspell: It has built-in support for skipping of
> > many macro arguments and environments[1], but:
> >
> >   a) It is not complete (and probably will never be)
> >   b) It cannot work for user defined macros/environments, and this is
> >   where AUCTeX/ispell shine: AUCTeX can parse user defined
> >   macros/environments and add them automatically to
> >   `ispell-tex-skip-alists'.
> >   c) Another advantage of `ispell-tex-skip-alists' is that one can write
> >   a function and put that in `ispell-tex-skip-alists' for certain
> >   macros/environments: That gives us a lot of flexibility to precisely
> >   skip or check.
>
> These issues are not TeX-specific, so they should be handled in a more
> general way, not bound to TeX/LaTeX.  In particular, any "tex-skip"
> features should not supplant the TeX support built into the speller,
> they should only _add_ skip regexps for stuff that the speller cannot
> support, like user-defined macros.
>
> I'm not sure I understand item c), though: when and why would one want
> to spell-check macros and environments?

If's completely possible to have TeX files with typos in the macros or
environments.  I wouldn't mind having some mechanism for detecting
such typos and suggesting correct possibilities.  Whether that should
be done through a spell-checking interface or not, I don't know.
Obviously I'd want the dictionary for spell-checking those lexemes to
be distinct from the ones used for checking ordinary text.

Please note I am not advocating for such a feature, I am only
responding to your question.

Lynn