5. Working With Dictionaries

5.1 How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary

If the master options is set in any fashion (via the command line, the ASPELL_CONF environmental variable, or a configuration file) Aspell will look for a dictionary of that name. If one could not be found complain.

Otherwise it will use the value of the lang option to search for an appropriate dictionary. If more than one dictionary is found for the given language string than it will look for a dictionary with a matching jargon if the jargon option is set. If it is not set it will look for a dictionary with no jargon. If after matching the lang and jargon there is still more than one dictionary available it will find one with the size closest to the value of the size option. The default size is 60. If Aspell can not find a dictionary based on the lang option than it will give up and complain.

If the lang option is not explicitly set its value will be based on the LC_MESSAGES locale. This locale is generally taken from the LC_MESSAGES environmental variable or the LANG environmental variable if LC_MESSAGES is not set. However, if Aspell is being used as a library from within another program which already explicitly set the locale then it will use the locale of the library rather than the environmental variables. If Aspell can not determine the language from the LC_MESSAGES locale than it will default to ``en_US''.

5.2 Listing Available Dictionaries

For a list of available dictionaries use the command ``aspell dump dicts''. This will form a list of dictionaries that aspell will search when a dictionary is not specifically given.

5.3 Dumping the contents of the word list

The dump command in aspell will simply dump the contents of a word list to stdout in a format than can be read back in with aspell create.

If no word list is specified the command will act on the default one. For example the command

aspell dump personal

will simply dump the contents of the current personal word list to stdout.

5.4 Creating an Individual Word List

To create an individual main word list from a list of words use the command

aspell --lang=«lang» create master ./«base» < «wordlist»

where «base» is the name of the word list and «word list» is the list of words separated by white space. The name of the word list will automatically be converted to all lowercase. The ``./'' is important because without it aspell will create the word list in the normal word list directory. If you are trying to create a word list in a language other than english check the aspell data-dir (usually /usr/share/aspell, use ``aspell dump config'' to find out what it is on your system) to see if a language data file exists for your language. If not you will need to create one. See chapter 7 for more information on using Aspell with other languages.

This will create the file «base» in the current directory. To use the new word list copy the file to the normal word list directory (use ``aspell config'' to find out what it is) and use the option --master=«base».

The compiled dictionary file is machine dependent. It is dependent on endian order, and the page size for the machine because they are mmaped in. Please do not distribute the compiled dictionaries unless you are only distributing them for a particular platform such as you would a binary. That is why is normally installed in ``lib/aspell'' instead of ``share/aspell''.

Aspell is now also able to use special ``multi'' dictionaries. See section 5 form more information.

A personal and replacement word list can be created in a similar fashion.

Because Aspell does not support any sort of affix compression like Ispell does Ispell word lists will not work as is. In order to use Ispell's word lists simply pipe the word list through ``ispell -e'' to expand the munched word lists.

5.4.1 Format of the Replacement Word List

The replacement word has each replacement pair on its own line in the following format

«misspelled word» «correction»

5.5 Using Multi Dictionaries

As with precious versions of aspell you can specify the main dictionary to use via the -d or --master option. However as of Aspell .32 you can now also:

1. Specify more than word list to use with the extra-dicts option.
2. Optionally have all accents striped form the word lists using strip-accents option. This is not the same thing as the ignore-accents option. As enabling the ignore-accents would accept both cafe and café (notice the accent on the e), but only enabling strip-accents would only accent cafe, even if café is in the original dictionary. Specify strip-accents is just like using a word list with out the accents.
3. Specify special ``multi'' dictionaries.

A ``multi'' dictionary is a special file which basically a list of dictionary files to use. A multi dictionary must end is .multi and has roughly the same format of a configuration file where the two valid keys are add and strip-accents. The add key is used for adding individual word lists, or other ``multi'' files. The strip-accents key is used to control if accents are striped from the dictionaries. Unlike the global strip-accent option this option only effects word lists that came after the option. For example:

strip-accents yes
add english
strip-accents no
add must-accent

will strip accents from the english word list but not the must-accent word list. If the global strip-accents option is specified the local strip-accents options are ignored

5.6 Dictionary Naming

In order for Aspell to be able to correctly recognize a dictionary based on the setting of the LANG environmental variable the dictionaries need to be located some where Aspell can find it and they need to be a ``multi'' dictionary. Where aspell looks for dictionaries depends on the value of the dict-dir and word-list-path option. Dict-dir is generally «prefix»/lib/aspell, and word-list-path is generally empty.

Each dictionary that you expect aspell to be able to find needs to have the following name:

«language»[_«region>][-«jargon»][-«size»].multi

Where «language» is the two letter language code, «region» is the two letter region code, «jargon» is any extra informations to distinguish the word list from other ones with the same language and spelling, and «size» is the size of the dictionary. If no size is specified that the default size of 60 will be assumed.

For example:

en.multi
en_US.multi
en-medical.multi
en-medical-85.multi
en-85.multi
de.multi

5.7 AWLI files

In order for Aspell to find dictionaries that are located in odd places or not named according to section 5.6 a AWLI file needs to be created for the dictionary and located in some place where Aspell can find it.

Each AWLI has the the following name:

«language»[_«region>][-«jargon»][-«size»]-«module».awli

Where the names have the same meaning as in section 5.6 and «module» is the speller module to use, which should be set to ``default'' for now since there is only one speller module.

Each AWLI file for an Aspell word list should then contain exactly one line which contains the full path of the main word list.