Aspell is an Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace
Ispell. Its main feature is that it does a much better job of coming
up with possible suggestions than Ispell does. In fact recent tests
shows that it even does better than Microsoft Word 97's spell checker
in some cases. In addition it has both compile time and run time support
for other non-English languages. Aspell is also a library however
the recommend way to use aspell is through the Pspell library as the
actual interface to the aspell library is constantly changing.
1.1 The Future of Aspell
Aspell .33.7 is most likely going to be the last official version
of Aspell as in the near future Aspell is going to be merged into
Pspell:
From: Kevin Atkinson
To: aspell-announce, pspell-announce
Date: 08/01/2001
Subject: Aspell and Pspell will be merged.
In the near future Aspell is going to be merged into Pspell. This
will happen with the next major release of Pspell. If everything goes
as planed, in the next major version of Pspell:
Aspell will be included as part of Pspell as a module
The Ispell module will also be included
Most of the functionally of the Aspell command will be replaced with
a new Pspell command which will work for any spell checker
The English dictionary will no longer be included with Aspell. Instead
it will be part of the Aspell-dicts package
The manuals will be switched over from LyX/LATEX to LyX/DocBook
so that in can easily be converted to other formats such as info and
man.
The current C++ interface may disappear and be replaced with a nicer
C++ interface which will act as a wrapper for the C interface as I
discussed earlier. If you are currently using the C++ interface and
this will create a major problem for you please let me know.
This will require major reorganization of just about anything associated
with Aspell and Pspell which will probably require packagers to redo
there packaging scheme for Aspell and Pspell as some libraries and
data files will disappear, other will be created, and the location
of some of the data files will be moved. Also, as mentioned above
Aspell, as you know it know, is going to disappear and be replaced
with a generic utility. Some Aspell specific things, such as creating
dictionaries, will remain in the Aspell utility however the executable
will be renamed to aspell-util to avoid any confusion.
Also, the Aspell sourceforge project might disappear, however I am
not sure about this. At very least the Aspell mailing lists and bug
tracker will disappear to avoid confusion on where question and bug
reports should be posted.
All of this should happen around the end of August.
The suggestion Intelligence is based on a small test kernel of misspelled/correct
word pairs. Go to http://aspell.sourceforge.net/test for more
info and how you can help contribute to the test kernel. The current
scores for aspell are 88 in fast mode, 93 in normal
mode, and 98 in bad spellers mode see section 5.4.5
for more information about the various suggestion modes.
If you have any other information you would like to add to this chart
please contact me at kevina at users sourceforge net.
Does a much better job with coming up with suggestions than Ispell
does or for that matter any other spell checker I have seen. If you
know a spell checker that does a better job please let me know.
Can learn from users misspellings.
Is an actual library that others programs can link to instead of having
to use it through a pipe.
Is multiprocess intelligent. When a personal dictionary (or replacement
list) is saved it will now first update the list against the dictionary
on disk in case another process modified it.
Can share the memory used in the main word list between processes.
Support for detachable dictionaries so that more than one
aspell class can use the same dictionary.
Support for multiple personal dictionaries as well as support for
special auxiliary dictionaries.
Better support for run-together words.
Ability to use multiple dictionaries by simply specifying it on the
command line or in the configuration files.