Re: Where is the personal dictionary for English language?

Kevin Atkinson <[email protected]> Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:28:55 -0600 (MDT)
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.aspell.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, Swarup wrote:

> On Fri, 2011-09-23 at 20:39 -0600, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, Swarup wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 2011-09-23 at 10:22 -0600, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, Swarup wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In my home directory there is a hidden file by the name .aspell.hi.pws,
>>>>> which is the "personal" aspell Hindi dictionary i.e if I add words to
>>>>> the Hindi dictionary, they get added to this file. In the same way if I
>>>>> add a word to the English dictionary, where is the file to which the
>>>>> word gets added? I don't see a similarly named file for English in my
>>>>> home directory. Sometimes I may add a word in error, and later need to
>>>>> remove it. For that reason I am asking.
>>>>
>>>> It should be ".aspell.en.pws".  It may not exist because you have not
>>>> added any English words to your personal dictionary.
>>>
>>> I have added many words. Not only that, but I have added some which I
>>> wish to remove. That is the reason I was searching for this file.
>>
>> Then try this do:
>>    aspell --lang=en dump config
>>
>> Than at the value of the following settings:
>>    home-dir
>>    personal
>>
>> It should tell the the exact value when configured for the English
>> language.  If that doesn't help than I really don't know where Aspell is
>> storing them.  It could be that it is really Hunspell that is being used,
>> in which case I can not help you.
>
> Is this what you are referring to--
>
> # home-dir (string)
> #   location for personal files
> # default: <$HOME|./> = /home/swarup

Yes and one that should look like this:

# personal (string)
#   personal dictionary file name
# default: .aspell.<lang>.pws = .aspell.en.pws

The "default:" line tells you what the effective value is.

> I am not using Hunspell, to the best of my knowledge. I am working in
> gedit, and the spellchecker I am using is aspell. I edit the aspell
> Hindi dictionary all the time, adding to it, changing words, removing
> words. And in the gedit tools menu I can select English or Hindi as the
> spellchecker. If the Hindi spellchecker in that very menu is aspell,
> then I would imagine the English spellchecker is also aspell.

Never versions of gedit may use Enchant, which can use different spell 
checkers for different languages.  It could be that Aspell was chosen for 
Hindi, but Hunspell for English.

You can also make sure Aspell is being used by creating a document with 
some words you know are in the personal dictionary and then checking it 
using "aspell check".