MySpell is a spell checker that was formerly included with OOo Writer of the free

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings, ...

. Since version 2.0.2, OpenOffice.org has replaced MySpell with

Hunspell Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyser designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding and character encoding, originally designed for the Hungarian language. Hunspell is based on MySpell and is backwar ...

Background

MySpell was started by Kevin Hendricks in an attempt to integrate various open-source spelling checkers into the

build. With a little prodding from Kevin Atkinson, the author of

Pspell The purpose of Pspell (Portable Spell Checker Interface Library) was to provide a generic interface to the system spelling checking libraries. It was, and sometimes still is, used in computer programming such as C, and is licensed under the GNU ...

and

Aspell GNU Aspell, usually called just Aspell, is a free software spell checker designed to replace Ispell. It is the standard spell checker for the GNU operating system. It also compiles for other Unix-like operating systems and Windows. The main pro ...

, a new spelling checker (MySpell) was written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

that supported affix compression, based on

Ispell Ispell is a spelling checker for Unix that supports most Western languages. It offers several interfaces, including a programmatic interface for use by editors such as Emacs. Unlike GNU Aspell, ispell will only suggest corrections that are based ...

Locale (language) files

Every locale (language for a specific territory) can have files for spelling, hyphenation and a thesaurus. These files will be all found together in one folder. The spell checking is done using the .aff file for the locale together with the .dic file. The .dic file is a list of words along with a group of letters which refer to the

affixes In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

found in the .aff file. This saves space because instead of having to include all forms of a word, like jump (jumping, jumps, jumped), the .dic file will include the word once and the references to the affixes in the .aff file allow the construction of all the other forms. It is not enough to copy the files for a locale into the folder. As there are multiple locales, automatic loading of all dictionaries would cause a considerable overhead. Hence only those locales listed in dictionary.lst are accessible. dictionary.lst can be edited with a simple text editor, but front ends provide a more user-friendly way of adding new locales.

MySpell with other programs

MySpell is currently used by other programs: *

AbiWord AbiWord () is a free and open-source software word processor. It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word "'' abierto''", meaning "open".Project MascoAbi the An ...

Aegisub Aegisub is a subtitle editing application. It is the main tool of fansubbing, the practice of creating or translating unofficial subtitles for visual media by fans. It is the successor of the original SubStation Alpha and Sabbu. Aegisub's ...

2.0 can use a dictionary created for MySpell by adding AFF and DIC files to the Dictionary folder. * NXT, a

CAT The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

suite from the

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

firm , can optionally use MySpell dictionaries for spell-checking. Aspell and Vim 7 can now use a dictionary created for MySpell.

External links

myspell
in the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

repository {{DEFAULTSORT:Myspell Free spelling checking programs Language software for Linux

Background

Locale (language) files

MySpell with other programs

See also

External links