This is ispell version 3.1, an interactive spelling checker.
Contents of this README file:
What Is Ispell and Why Do I Want It?
What's New in This Version?
Where Can I Get Ispell?
OK, How Do I Install It?
Who Wrote Ispell?
Where Do I Send Bug Reports?
Where Do I Get Dictionaries?
How Long Does It Take to Make Dictionaries?
Special Installation Notes for Certain Machines:
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What Is Ispell and Why Do I Want It?
Ispell is a fast screen-oriented spelling checker that shows you
your errors in the context of the original file, and suggests possible
corrections when it can figure them out. Compared to UNIX spell, it
is faster and much easier to use. Ispell can also handle languages
other than English.
What's New in This Version?
Compared to ispell versions 2 and 4.0 (the latter was the
short-lived Gnu version), ispell 3.1 contains many new features,
notably TeX support, international language support, and handling
of prefixes as well as suffixes. Compared to ispell version 3.0,
ispell 3.1 has many bug fixes, a number of minor improvements, and
vastly improved support for multiple languages.
The only truly important difference between 3.0 and 3.1 is in the
format of the "defstringtype" and "altstringtype" statements,
which now require a deformatter argument. Existing affix files
will have to be converted. See ispell.4 for documentation, or
deutsch.aff for an extended example. The conversion is very easy
to do. All affix files distributed with ispell have already been
converted.
The complete list of bug fixes and improvements is too long to
include here (and besides, I'm too overworked to create it).
However, users of ispell 2.0 and ispell 4.0 should note that the
"x" and "q" commands have been interchanged.
Where Can I Get Ispell?
The current version of ispell is available for anonymous ftp from
ftp.cs.ucla.edu (131.179.128.34) or ftp.math.orst.edu
(128.193.80.160), in the pub/ispell-3.1 directory. The latest
version is always named "ispell-3.1.xx.tar.gz", where "xx" is
the patch level. There are also sometimes files name
"README-patchxx" which contain notes specific to a given version.
Announcements of patches to ispell will be posted to comp.text.tex
and gnu.emacs.help.
A number of ftp mirror sites also store ispell. Check Archie for
"ispell-3.1" to find a site near you.
Ispell comes with English dictionaries. For other languages,
check the "Where" file in the "languages" subdirectory for hints
on where to find dictionaries.
OK, How Do I Install It?
Ispell is quite portable (thanks to many people). If you speak
American English and have a BSD-like system, you may be able to
get away with simply typing "make all" to finish unpacking
the kit and make ispell and a dictionary, all configured to be
installed in /usr/local/*. If you have a USG (System V) system,
you will at least have to copy "local.h.samp" to "local.h", then
add "#define USG" to local.h before compiling. Be sure you have
at least 10 MB of free space in /tmp, or set your TMPDIR
environment variable to point somewhere with that much space.
For more complex installations, you will have to create a fancier
local.h file. All customization of ispell 3.1, even for the
Makefile, is done by creating or editing the file "local.h" to
override the default definitions of certain variables. The most
common changes will be to the LANGUAGES variable (to set the
languages; see also the Makefiles in the various language
subdirectories), CC (to choose gcc), and BINDIR through MAN4DIR
(to control where ispell is installed). There are many other
configuration parameters; see config.X for the complete list and
further instructions. *DO NOT* make changes to config.X or to any
of the Makefiles. Anything you define in "local.h" will override
definitions in those files.
After all edits, you are ready to compile ispell. Make sure you
have set your TMPDIR environment variable, and then type
"make all". This will compile all the programs, put the
dictionaries together, and build the hash file.
If you chose a "+" version of the dictionary (the LANGUAGES macro
in config.X), expect this first make to run for quite a while
(usually about half an hour, but as much as 24 hours on a very
limited machine) because of the munchlist step. If you chose a
non-plus version, the make will not take long. The munchlist step
will also take a *lot* of disk space (see the table below for more
information), so be sure to set TMPDIR in your environment to
point to someplace with lots of room.
After your first make completes, you are ready to install ispell.
The standard "make install" will install ispell, the auxiliary
programs and scripts, the manual page, and the dictionary hash
file, all in the directories you have chosen for them. This
usually has to be done as root, and on some systems you will not
be able to redirect the output to a file. (If you're the careful
sort, you'll check the output of "make -n install" first to be
sure there are no hidden surprises.) If you have emacs, note that
the installation process does not modify the top-level Info menu
to include ispell; you must do this by hand if you want ispell to
appear in the top-level menu. The installation process may
clobber emacs-related files from ispell 4.0. If you don't
consider this a feature, you should preserve them first.
As well as the standard "make clean" and "make realclean" targets,
there is also a "make dictclean" target which will get rid of
constructed dictionary files such as "english.med+". This is a
separate target because of the time it takes to build
dictionaries.
Finally, there is a directory named "addons", which contains shar
kits for ispell helper programs that were generously written by
other people. These are not copyrighted or supported by the
ispell maintainer. Contact the original authors (listed in README
files in the kits) for more information.
Who Wrote Ispell?
Ispell is a very old program. The original was written in PDP-10
assembly in 1971, by R. E. Gorin. The C version was written by
Pace Willisson of MIT. Walt Buehring of Texas Instruments added
the emacs interface and posted it to the net. Geoff Kuenning
added the international support and created the current posting.
Many, many other people contributed to the current version; a
complete list (with a much more detailed history) can be found in
the file "Contributors".
Where Do I Send Bug Reports?
Most ispell bug reports, except bugs related to the emacs-lisp
interface, should be sent to "ispell-bugs@itcorp.com". Bugs in
the emacs interface (ispell.el) should be sent to
"ispell-el-bugs@itcorp.com". If you're not sure which address to
use, send your report to "ispell-bugs@itcorp.com" and I'll sort it
out from there.
Bugs in add-on packages (found in the "addons" subdirectory)
should not be sent to itcorp.com. Instead, send reports to the
developers of those packages (see the README file for the package
you are using).
Where Do I Get Dictionaries?
Ispell comes with American and British dictionaries. For other
languages, consult the file "languages/Where", which lists
everything I know about. If you create a dictionary of your own
and make it available for ftp, please send a notification to
ispell-bugs@itcorp.com so that I can add your dictionary to the ftp
list.
How Long Does It Take to Make Dictionaries?
The following tables give approximate timings and peak disk usage
for making each of the three augmented English dictionaries (the
so-called "plus" versions). The timings were collected on an
unloaded 68040. Your mileage may vary.
Using EXTRADICT=/usr/dict/words:
Time to build Peak temp space Final size
english.sml+ 30 minutes 7.1M 306K
english.med+ 35 minutes 8.8M 359K
english.lrg+ 60 minutes 10.7M 680K
Using EXTRADICT=/usr/dict/words and /usr/dict/web2:
Time to build Peak temp space Final size
english.sml+ 2-1/2 hours 19.5M 2243K
english.med+ 2-1/2 hours 19.6M 2265K
english.lrg+ 3 hours 20.7M 2347K
The peak disk usage occurs fairly early in the munching process.
When creating english.lrg+ with /usr/dict/web2, the peak was
reached within 30 minutes. When web2 was omitted, the peak was
always reached within 1/4 of the total running time of munchlist.
Again, remember that these times will vary depending on your load
and your machine's power.
Special Installation Notes for Certain Machines:
Although I have tried to avoid putting in specific machine
dependencies as a general rule, some machine-specific #defines
will be found at the end of config.X.
If you get lots of warnings when compiling term.c, check to be
sure that you have correctly defined SIGNAL_TYPE in your local.h.
Some versions of ISC Unix have TIOCGWINSZ defined even though it's
not supported and the necessary structures are not present. The
solution is to add "#undef TIOCGWINSZ" in your local.h.
Some versions of SCO Unix define "struct winsize" conditionally.
The solution is to add "#define _IBCS2" in your local.h.
Some versions of SCO Unix define "struct winsize" in a weird
place. Add #includes of <sys/stream.h> and <sys/ptem.h> to your
local.h to get around this.
Suns running 4.1.1 also have a bug in sort which causes core dumps
when running munchlist. Sun users who have the System 5 option
can work around this bug by making sure that /usr/5bin precedes
/usr/bin in their path, so that /usr/5bin/sort is used by
munchlist.
It is reported that gnu sort does not recognize the -T option.
Define SORTTMP and MAKE_SORTTMP as the null string ("") if you use
gnu sort, or change your path to use the manufacturer's sort
command (but watch out for Sun's sort bug, above!).
Some versions of gcc for the Sparc have an optimizer bug that
causes problems for languages that use 8-bit characters. The
solution is to turn off optimization when compiling at least
makedent.c, or for all of ispell. The bug is known to exist in
gcc 2.4.5, and is known to have been fixed in gcc 2.5.8.
The AIX RS6000 should use -lcurses for TERMLIB, rather than -ltermcap.
Amiga users will need to #define fork vfork. Other than this,
ispell should compile using gcc on the Amiga.
There have been reports that some BSD releases don't properly
declare "extern int errno" in errno.h. If you suffer from this
problem, you'll have to add your own declaration in your local.h.
There are known problems on Ultrix with the interaction between
ispell and some versions elm on Ultrix. You may be able to fix
this by making sure USG is undefined, or you may have to make more
extensive changes to term.c to cause it to use the "termios"
interface instead of the "termio" one.
The DEC Alpha and Cray have 64-bit longs. Make sure you define
MASKTYPE_WIDTH as 64 for these machines.
Although ispell is not officially supported on MS-DOS, there are a
couple of #defines that you might find useful if you want to do
such a thing. Check the end of config.X
HP systems will need C compiler patch PHSS_3015 to compile ispell
correctly. The symptom of the wrong compiler is incorrect
highlighting of misspelled words. Gcc will also compile ispell
correctly on HP systems.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.