3 AUTHOR: Tom Harrison <harrist@freeshell.org>
6 ispell-3.2.06 is a spell checker. This brief hint is intended to
7 make installing it easier. I only installed the American English
8 dictionary, but dictionaries for some other languages are included.
11 The goal is to install ispell, and optionally to integrate an
12 existing word list into its dictionary. My Mandrake distribution
13 includes the file /usr/share/dict/linux.words. You might have this, or
14 a list of names or technical terms that you want to include. You don't
15 have to include anything at all; The documentation describes how to
16 build with only the default dictionary, and add a word list later if you
17 want to. Make sure you have at least 10 MB of free space in /tmp, or
18 set TMPDIR to someplace that does:
20 $ export TMPDIR=/var/tmp
22 Download ispell-3.2.06.tar.gz from
23 http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html.
24 The md5sum of my copy is d434e1aef1a815294d5012c60c4c414a.
26 Unpack the source in an appropriate place, for example /usr/src, then cd
29 Next, correct a minor known typo in the file parse.y
31 $ cp parse.y parse.y.backup &&
32 > sed '675d' parse.y.backup >parse.y
34 This is to prevent a syntax error from halting the build.
37 Ispell is configured by editing a file called local.h.
38 local.h.samp is provided to get you started.
40 $ cp local.h.samp local.h
42 Configuration options are listed in the file config.X, and are
43 discussed in README. Note: config.X is not to be changed. All
44 changes are made to local.h. Read the warning in local.h; local.h
45 is not a normal C header file.
47 Open the file local.h in the text editor of your choice.
48 Refer to config.X as you edit local.h; Except for the changes listed
49 here, I used the defaults. The default install is to /usr/local.
51 Change "#undef USG" to "#define USG".
53 At the end of the file, add these lines:
54 #define TERMLIB "-lncurses"
56 #define WORDS "/usr/local/share/dict/linux.words"
57 #define LANGUAGES "{american,MASTERDICTS=american.med+,\
58 HASHFILES=americanmed+.hash,\
59 EXTRADICT=/usr/local/share/dict/linux.words}"
60 (Note that the previous #define is all one line, without back-slashes.)
61 #define MASTERHASH "americanmed+.hash"
71 At least glance at the man page, and try it out. You can use ispell
72 interactively to look up individual words, or you can spell-check
73 a file or files. If you want to integrate ispell with EMACS, ispell.el
76 http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html
78 In addition to those provided, dictionaries for quite a few languages
79 other than English are available at
81 http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell-dictionaries.html
84 I hope this hint is useful. If it doesn't work for you, or if you have ideas
85 for improvement or expansion, please let me know.