GNU Aspell

GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed toeventually replace Ispell. It can either be used as a library or asan independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled wordthan just about any other spell checker out there for the Englishlanguage. Unlike Ispell, Aspell can also easily check documents inUTF-8 without having to use a special dictionary. Aspell will also doits best to respect the current locale setting. Other advantages overIspell include support for using multiple dictionaries at once andintelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one Aspellprocess is open at once.

Try it out for your self using the Aspell Spell Helper or see someTest Results Comparing Aspellwith other spell checkers.

Quick Links

News

July 4, 2013
GNU Aspell is looking for a co-maintainer. If you're interested, pleasetake a look at this generalinformation about GNU packages and being a GNU maintainer, andthen email maintainers@gnu.org with a bit about your background andparticular interest in this package.More

September 12, 2011
In recent years the development of Aspell has stagnated, but I havenever really lost interest in Aspell. The problem was that I just didnot know how to move forward in light of Hunspell slower taking therole that I meant for Aspell to take. However, after giving itcareful thought I believe Aspell future depends on making Enchant thesystem spell checker. This will involve some effort on the part ofothers to make it happen.More(Followup Discussion).

July 4, 2011
GNU Aspell 0.60.6.1 is now available. This is a bug fix release.More.

Aspell 0.60.7 pre-release snapshot now availableMore.

May 14, 2008
Updated the Test Results page to includerecent versions of Aspell and Hunspell and to include total run times.

April 17, 2008
Need Someone to Maintain Aspell Windows Port. More

April 16, 2008
GNU Aspell 0.60.6 is now available. This release improves suggestion results in certain cases and fixes aa number of bugs.More.

November 4, 2007
At long last, the Aspell Spell Helperis working again.

October 15, 2007
New Aspell 0.61 Snapshot Now Available.More

November 20, 2006
Help Needed To Maintain Aspell's Many Dictionaries.More.

November 7, 2004
MS Visual C++ Port Now Available for Aspell 0.60 at ftp.gnu.org:/gnu/aspell.More

August 27, 2004
GNU Aspell 0.60 is now available. The two major changes in thisrelease, as compared to 0.50.5, are support for affix compression andbetter Unicode support. More.

April 15, 2004
Thanks to Joseph Blough a small Win32/Linux GUI for Aspell is nowavailable. More.

March 25, 2004
Mirror for czyborra.com/charsets nowavailable.

Older News

Getting

The latest version of GNU Aspell is 0.60.6.1. You can find it at ftp.gnu.org:/gnu/aspell or ata GNU mirror site. Youwill also need to download at least one dictionary which can be foundat the same location.

If you are looking for Aspell 0.33.7, Pspell, or dictionaries forAspell 0.33.7 go here.

A patch for ispell.el for improved Aspell support also available.This patch will notify aspell of the replacements one makes so it canimprove the suggestion list in the future. A more involved patch canbe found hereThis one also adds UTF-8 support but will only apply cleanly toIspell.el 3.7 beta.

Support

Unofficial support for GNU Aspell can be found at the aspell-usermailing list. You do not need to be subscribed in order to post,however if you don't subscribe your post will need to be approved. Thelist mailing address is aspell-user@gnu.org.Please direct all problems you have with Aspell to this list and not directly to Kevin.

Additional Information

Language Bindings

Getting Involved

The easiest thing you can do help out is to try GNU Aspell out andreport bugs or even better submit patches to fix problems. Please usethe Sourceforgetools to report bugs and submit patches.

If you are interested in following the latest developments be sure andsubscribe to the aspell-announcemailing list.

If you are a fairly regular user of Aspell consider subscribing to theaspell-usermailing list to help other users out with their problems.

If you are interested in helping with the development of Aspell orhave an idea you would like to discuss post it to the aspell-develmailing list. The aspell-devel mailing list is meant for people interested in the development of the actual Aspell utility/library.If you have a question about how to use the Aspell library please postto the aspell-user mailing list.

Donating

If you wish to support Aspell consider donating.Your donation will improve Aspell by encouraging Kevin Atkinson, themain developer of Aspell, to continue to spend his time developingAspell. Without your support Aspell may go into another period ofnon-development as was the case for most of 2003.

To Do

Lots of jobs remain to be done. Unfortunately, I do not have the timeto do all so if you are interested in helping me with one of thesetasks please email me at kevina@gnu.org. Good C++ skillsare needed for most of these tasks involving coding.

Things that need to be done

These items need to be done before I consider Aspell finished. If youare interested in helping me with one of these tasks please emailme. Good C++ skills are needed for most of these tasks involvingcoding.

Support Hunspellfeatures that Aspell doesn't have which prove to be usefull.Most likely:
- Twofold suffix stripping
- Better support for compound words. The support forconditional compound words found in Aspell versions 0.50and earlier is no longer available since no one seams to be usingit. Support for unconditional compound words will still beavailable. I have some ideas on the topic available here, but perhapes somethingcompatable with how Hunspell does it will be better.
- Maybe others.
Create a generic filter to handle multi-character letters such as"a or \"a for ä. This filter should make use of thealready exiting normalization code if possible. [Done for Aspell 0.61]
Make Aspell Thread safe. Even though Aspell itself is notmulti-threaded I would like it to be thread safe so that it can beused by multi-threaded programs. There are several areas of Aspellthat that are potently thread unsafe (such as accessing a global pool)and several classes which have the potential of being used by morethan one thread (such as the personal dictionary). [InProgress].
Enhance ispell.el so that it will work better with GNUAspell. [In Progress].
Clean up copyright notices and bring the Aspell package up toGNU Standards. [In Progress].

Things I would like to get done

I would like to get these done. However, I may still consider Aspellfinished with out. They will probably eventually getimplemented. However, I could still use help with them.

Be able to accept words with spaces in them as many languageshave words, such as a word in a foreign phrase, which only make sensewhen followed by other words. See Words With Symbols inThem.
Reorganize manual to make it easier to understand and to make itpossible to break out useful man pages.
Support soundslike lookup with affix compression. I think itis possible, although I don't know how effective it will be. The basicidea is to affix compress the soundslike codes and then match thecodes up with affix compressed words. If you are interested,email aspell-devel@gnu.org, and I will explain it in moredetail.
Use Lawrence Philips' new Double Metaphone algorithm. Seehttp://aspell.net/metaphone/. The main task involvedhere is converting the algorithm into table form. This will take sometime but their is no real programming experience is required. If youwant to help with Aspell but don't have any real programmingexperience, this would be a great place to start.
Rank suggestions based on frequency information. Both globalfrequency and document specific frequency can be used. The latter willrequire that the whole document be made available to the spell checker. Also use frequency information to flag words which are found in thedictionary but not in common usage, and thus might not be what wasintended.
Support a "dual-script" mode where Aspell can use a separatedictionary depending on which script it detects the current word in, thetwo dictionaries can have nothing in common, ie an English one and aRussian one for example. This will not support two languages thatuse the same script as that is a lot more complicated. For example ifthe word is misspelled which dictionary should it use for thesuggestions?
Write a GUI for the aspell utility. Ideally it should be able to doeverything the Aspell utility can do and not just be able spell checka document.
Develop a more powerfull C API for Aspell. Ideally this API shouldallow one to perform all the tasks the Aspell utility can do. Thisincluded the ability to check whole documents, and createdictionaries, among other things.
Create a C++ interface for Aspell, possibly ontop of the C one.
Support more than one spell checker engine. The basic support isthere, but since there has only every been one spell checker engine,it will probably take a decent amount of work.

Sub Projects

Be sure to check out my home page.