Aspell Status as of Sep 22

Aspell 0.50.2 should be out with in a couple of weeks.  A good number of=20
bugs have been fixed.  However, I am still trying to track down a bug with=
=20
ispell.el.  If you are interested in the most stable version of Aspell you=
=20
can use the "rel_0_50-branch" of the CVS version of Aspell.

A decent deal of work has been done toward Aspell 0.51 in the past=20
month:

* Aspell now has gettext support thanks to Sergey Poznyakoff.  Current=20
the only locale supported is "es".  Now would be a good time to consider=20
adding gettext support for your language.

* Rudimentary Loadable filter support has been added thanks to Sergey=20
Poznyakoff.  Christoph Hinterm=FCller is working with me to improve it.

* I reworked the way soundslike lookups are handles typo-analysis is used. =
=20
This cut the suggestion time in most cases anywhere from 1/2 to 1/4 and in
some cases even better.  It also reduces the size of the compiled Aspell
dictionary by roughly 20%.

All of these changes can be found in the latest CVS version of Aspell.  If=
=20
there is enough interest I will create a snapshot to make trying it out=20
easier.

Also:

* I am on the verge of adding affix support to Aspell.  Furthermore, I=20
have figured out a way to support both soundslike lookup and affix=20
compression at the same time.  Something, which I previously didn't think=
=20
was possible.

* Lutz Horn has converted roughly half of the Aspell manual to texinfo=20
format.  I am not sure if he is going to have time to finish the task. =20
So, if anyone is interested in picking up where he left off please let me=
=20
know.

There are still a decent number of jobs that remain to be done.  So if you=
=20
are interested in helping me with one of these tasks please email me at=20
[email protected]. Good C++ skills are needed for most of these tasks=20
involving coding.

I am also still looking for someone to eventually take over the
maintenance and development of Aspell. If you are interested please
contact me directly.

* Clean up copyright notices and bring the Aspell package up to GNU=20
  Standards.

* Allow Aspell to check documents which are in UTF-8. The main thing to be=
=20
  done is to get Aspell to display UTF-8 correctly. This will involve=20
  being able to get the length of UTF-8 strings and display UTF-8 using=20
  the curses library.

* Make Aspell Thread safe. Even though Aspell itself is not multi-threaded=
=20
  I would like it to be thread safe so that it can be used by=20
  multi-threaded programs. There are several areas of Aspell that that=20
  are potently thread unsafe (such as accessing a global pool) and several=
=20
  several classes which have the potential of being used by more than one=
=20
  thread (such as the personal dictionary).

* Create a C++ interface for Aspell on top of the C interface.

* Enhance ispell.el so that it will work better with the new Aspell.=20

Kevin Atkinson,
The sole Aspell maintainer

--=20
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org