Re: Hyphens and apostrophes in words

Thanks for replying, Carlo.

I will repeat my tests,  I begin with problem no 2. Remember, I am using 
aspell 0.50.3 for Windows.

I open the command prompt window, go to folder C:\Program Files\Aspell\data, 
I change in "en.dat" from "special ' -*-" to "special ' ***".

I put the words "some odd words 'twas more" in a text file "variant.dat" and 
run "aspell --lang en create master ./variant < variant.dat" followed by 
"copy variant. ..\dict\variant".

I put some test text into "testaspell.txt": some odd words xtekt 'twas more

Now I run "aspell check --master variant testaspell.txt" and two words are 
queried: xtekt and 'twas.  For 'twas, the suggested replacement is 'twas !

This is the same result I got before. Have I left something out? Would this 
work differently on other systems or versions?

Ciarán Ó Duibhín.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carlo Traverso" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 11:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Aspell-user] Hyphens and apostrophes in words


>
>>>>>> "ciaran" == =?iso-8859-1?B?Q2lhcuFuINMgRHVpYmjtbg==?=  <iso-8859-1> 
>>>>>> writes:
>
>    ciaran> I'd like to know which, if any, spellcheckers can be
>    ciaran> configured to act like this.  (The examples are from
>    ciaran> English but the real need comes from other languages.)
>    ciaran> Asking here about aspell particularly, of course.
>
>    ciaran> First, if necessary, allow the dictionary to contain words
>    ciaran> with apostrophe "'" and hyphen "-" in any position. (I am
>    ciaran> aware of the side-effects of this and am not worried by
>    ciaran> them.)
>
>    ciaran> Now, when checking text:
>
>    ciaran> 1. Accept a word containing a hyphen if EITHER the
>    ciaran> dictionary contains the whole word including the hyphen
>    ciaran> ("hotch-potch") OR if the dictionary contains both parts
>    ciaran> separately ("half-moon").
>
>    ciaran> 2. With a dictionary containing "'twas" but not "twas",
>    ciaran> accept "'twas".
>
>    ciaran> 3. With a dictionary containing "well" but not "'well",
>    ciaran> not accept "'well".
>
> aspell can do 2 and 3, (but you have to recompile the English
> dictionary after changing the handling of ' in the .dat file; and of
> course add the acceptable words; this is the aspell way to do your
> "First" point).
>
> For 1, you should modify the .dat file again allowing - in the middle
> of a word, add the composed words, and pass the spell-checker twice,
> once with the modified dictionary, (to accept the words with -) once
> with the original one (or rather the one modified in the first step)
> to accept the two components. The first pass will refuse the words
> with - not included, the second pass will split their components and
> check again.
>
> I don't think that it is possible to do it with one pass, combining
> the two dictionaries in one .multi file since the .dat have to be
> different (and hence the word tokens will be different).
>
> Carlo Traverso