[Fwd]: [Aspell-user] Aspell Status Update as of February 12, 2004

Kindly  go through  this.  We  desperately  need a  spell checker  for
Malayalam (at  least, I am not  aware of any), and  Aspell, apart from
being a GNU project, has  the added advantage of being integrated into
several suites,  and even a  partially supported Windows  port exists.
It is  also a drop-in replacement  for Ispell, which  is default spell
checking libray for most applications.

However, I *think* Aspell is  yet to support unicode.  Kevin Atkinson,
author of  Aspell is on Bcc;  and people interested  in helping should
contact the aspell-user or aspell-devel [at] gnu dot org lists.

Interested people  should go through  the existing Aspell  sources and
documentation, archives  of the  lists, make sure  that they  know C++
coding ;) and be prepared to take up a long term committment.

PS:-  Newbie questions  may  kindly be  posted  to this  list, if  not
answered by aspell documentation.

----- Forwarded message from Kevin Atkinson < > -----

 > Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 02:43:46 -0500 (EST)
 > From: Kevin Atkinson <kevina-mXXj517/[email protected]>
 > Subject: [Aspell-user] Aspell Status Update as of February 12, 2004
 > To: aspell-announce-mXXj517/[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
 > Cc: 
 > 
 > I have recently been putting a lot of work towards Aspell 0.51.  I have
 > made a good deal of changes.  Most of the items in my initial To Do list
 > are done.  Pre-release snapshots are now available off of Aspell home page
 > http://aspell.net/.
 > 
 > The biggest change in Aspell 0.51 is support for Affix Compression.  
 > Affix compression is the act of combining several words with a common base
 > word into one word which consists of the base word and a list of affixes
 > to apply.  (Affix is the generic term for prefix, suffix or infix).  For
 > example "alarm alarms alarmed alarming" will become "alarm/SDG" where SDG
 > stands for the suffixes of alarm.  This can make a huge difference in
 > space for languages with have extensive affixation such as German.
 > 
 > Ever since I started Aspell this has been one of the most requested
 > features, as without it dictionaries in some languages are huge.  A while
 > ago, For some reason Red Hat decided to abandon Ispell in favor of Aspell,
 > a move that even I found questionable.  The package maintainer complained
 > loudly about the size of the dictionaries, and the fact that the
 > dictionaries will take up half a CD, but did not submit any code.  
 > Latter, when Aspell was being considered for OpenOffice the issue of Affix
 > Compression came up again for the same reason (size), but this time,
 > something was done about it.  Kevin Hendricks studied the Ispell code and
 > reimplemented it in simple C++, with the intent of it eventually getting
 > integrated into Aspell.  During that process he also wrote a simple spell
 > checker library called MySpell which ended up being used in OpenOffice.  
 > He left it to me to integrate into Aspell.  Now, nearly two years latter,
 > his code has finally been integrated in Aspell.
 > 
 > However, unlike Ispell, not every word list should be affix compressed.  
 > That is because with Affix Compression soundslike lookup can, currently,
 > not be used.  Aspell soundslike lookup is what makes Aspell such a
 > powerful spell checker when coming up with suggestions, and with out it
 > suggestion quality will suffer for non-phonetic languages such as English.  
 > Nevertheless, even with Affix Compression, Aspell does a better job than
 > Ispell since it is able to look for words in which two mistakes were made
 > instead of one (ie sychlogist for psychologist), is able to find a
 > correctly accented form of a word when accents are left off, and is able
 > to use MySpell's replacement tables which allow a group of letters such as
 > replacing "uff" with "ough".
 > 
 > In fact, with Affix Compression finally implemented the only thing Ispell
 > has that Aspell does not is a nroff filter modem which should
 > change by the time Aspell 0.51 is released.  It is my sincere hope that
 > when Aspell 0.51 is released Aspell can become the de facto spell checker
 > for all free operating systems and possible all Unix like systems.  
 > However, I do not expect this to happen overnight as Ispell is a very old
 > program which can be found on most all Unix like systems and has in fact
 > become the de facto spell checker of the Unix world.
 > 
 > I also hope that major programs, such as OpenOffice, Mozilla, start 
 > offering the option to use Aspell if it is installed on the system rather 
 > than only relaying on their builtin spell checker.  I hope to improve the 
 > interface of Aspell and the inner workings to make Aspell more suitable 
 > for the task.
 > 
 > Affix compression is not the only change in Aspell 0.51.  Other changes 
 > include:
 > 
 >    * Added support for loadable filters thanks to Christoph Hintermüller
 > 
 >    * Enhanced TEX filter to support recognizing accent commands, such as
 >      the German umlaute, and to treat words with hyphenation characters
 >      in them as one word, also thanks to Christoph Hintermüller
 > 
 >    * Added gettext support thanks to Sergey Poznyakoff
 > 
 >    * Reworked how the dictionary is stored to take up less space (around
 >      80% for the English language) and be faster in some cases.
 > 
 >    * Reworked the build system so that a single Makefile is used for
 >      most of the code.
 > 
 >    * Added support for MySpell Replacement Tables for better suggestions
 >      when phonet information is not available.
 > 
 >    * Manual has has been converted to texinfo format thanks to the work
 >      of Chris Martin.
 > 
 > Additional things which will be done by Aspell 0.51 include:
 > 
 >    * Make Aspell Thread safe
 > 
 >    * Enhance ispell.el so that it will work better with the new
 >      Aspell.
 > 
 > However, there is still more to be done, and I can certainly use some
 > additional help.  In particular the following items need to be done before
 > I consider Aspell finished. If you are interested in helping me with one
 > of these tasks please email me. Good C++ skills are needed for most of
 > these tasks involving coding. I hope to have these all done by Aspell
 > 0.51.
 > 
 >    * Clean up copyright notices and bring the Aspell package up to *GNU
 >      Standards*.
 > 
 >    * Allow Aspell to *check documents which are in UTF-8*. I don't know
 >      the proper way to use Unicode characters with the curses library,
 >      and I can't seam to find any concrete documentation on how to do
 >      it. If you have experience in this area I would really appreciate
 >      it if you could enlighten me.
 > 
 >    * Come up with a *nroff mode* for spell checking. I know nothing
 >      about nroff. I would gladly write the filter if someone would be
 >      willing to work with me in developing one. All I really need to
 >      know is what to skip.
 > 
 > And the following things I would like to get done.  However, I may still
 > consider Aspell finished with out. They will probably eventually get
 > implemented. However, I could still use help with them.
 > 
 >    * Use Lawrence Philips' new *Double Metaphone algorithm*. See
 >      `http://aspell.sourceforge.net/metaphone/'. The main task involved
 >      here is converting the algorithm into table form. This will take
 >      some time but their is no real programming experience is required.
 >      If you want to help with Aspell but don't have any real programming
 >      experience, this would be a great place to start.
 > 
 >    * Create a *C++ interface* for Aspell, possibly on top of the C one.
 > 
 >    * Write a *GUI* for the aspell utility. Ideally it should be able to
 >      do everything the Aspell utility can do and not just be able spell
 >      check a document.
 > 
 >    * Better *support for compound words*. If you speak a language which
 >      has a lot of compound of run-together words I would appreciate
 >      hearing back from you. The current support for _conditional_
 >      compound words will disappear in Aspell 0.51 since no one seams to
 >      be using it. Support for _unconditional_ compound words will still
 >      be available. However, several people have informed me that they
 >      need more. I attempted to provide that, but it wasn't powerful
 >      enough, and hence unused. Thus, I am going to start from scratch,
 >      but I need to know exactly what is involved in correct compound
 >      formation.
 > 
 >    * Rank suggestions based on *frequency information*.  Both global
 >      frequency and document specific frequency can be used.  The latter
 >      will require that the whole document be made available to the
 >      spell checker.  Also use frequency information to flag words which
 >      are found in the dictionary but not in common usage, and thus
 >      might not be what was intended.
 > 
 >    * Be able to accept *words with spaces in them* as many languages
 >      have words, such as a word in a foreign phrase, which only make
 >      sense when followed by other words.
 > 
 >    * Support *soundslike lookup with affix compression*.  I think it is
 >      possible, although I don't know how effective it will be.  The
 >      basic idea is to affix compress the soundslike codes and then
 >      match the codes up with affix compressed words.  If you are
 >      interested, email <aspell-devel-mXXj517/[email protected]>, and I will explain it in
 >      more detail.
 > 
 > Finally, I would really appreciate it if people could start trying out the
 > pre-release snapshots.  I would especially appreciate it if dictionary
 > authors could try out the affix compression in Aspell and report back any
 > problems.  The latest snapshot is
 > http://aspell.net/devel/aspell-0.51-20040212.tar.gz.  Future versions will
 > be uploaded to http://aspell.net/devel/.
 > 
 > 
 > On a different note, Aspell 0.50.5 was just released.  It contains mostly
 > bug fixes with a few minor enhancements.  You should eventually be able to
 > get it at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell but it is not their yet.  In the
 > meanwhile you can get it at http://aspell.net/aspell-0.50.5.tar.gz. 
 > 
 > ---
 > http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > _______________________________________________
 > Aspell-user mailing list
 > Aspell-user-mXXj517/[email protected]
 > http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/aspell-user

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
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  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
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  Kerala, India.                          
                                          
  http://paivakil.port5.com         
                                          
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