Re: [aspell-user] aspell problems

[Kevin Atkinson]

On 24 Apr 2001, Trond Eivind Glomsrød wrote:

> Kevin Atkinson <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > > 1) If the user has an existing aspell configuration, specifying language,
> > >    the build could fail: I had specified "american" as the language and
> > >    removed the previous aspell installation (as I've known the aspell
> > >    build process not to be clean before - it would happily link new
> > >    binaries with the old libraries). When aspell was run during the
> > >    build process to create these dictionaries, it failed - complaining
> > >    that the "american" file couldn't be found. IMHO, aspell shouldn't
> > >    look for external info during build.
> >
> > Could you give me some more detail.  It shouldn't be doing this.
>
> I had "lang american" in my .aspell.conf (which worked fine), then
> removed aspell in order to build the new aspell (I've experience bad
> linking before unless I do that, and pspell also has broken build
> process. Possibly because of the libtool branch.). When aspell builds,
> it will then fail when creating the dictionaries.

I have added --lang=english to the commands to create the word list.  This
should fix this problem.

> > The option you want to use is --language-tag=en_US or --master=american
> > (or -d american) not --lang=american.
>
> The "aspell --help" says
>
>   --lang=<str>                default language to use
>
> for --lang, nothing for --language-tag (which also strikes me as less
> intuitive, and
>
> "-d,--master=<str>           main word list base name"

How about the following description.

--lang=<str>         default language to use when all else fails
--language-tag=<str> lang. code to use when finding an appropriate dict.

> > The --lang tag should only really
> > be used when creating dictionaries.  It will also work when selecting a
> > dictionary but only if the language of that name exists, the "american" is
> > not an Aspell language ("english" is).
>
> There is an american.multi, and since American differ slightly from
> English ("color" vs. "colour"), American is IMHO the language which
> should be specified.

Perhaps but Aspell simply does not work that way.  The language that the
American dictionary is using is English.  The default dictionary Aspell
uses _when all else fails_ is the same as the name of the current
language.  So specifying --lang=american will sort of work because when
the LANG environmental variable is not set aspell will look for a
dictionary named "american".  However if the LANG variable is set Aspell
will first use it to try to find the dictionary.  More generally Aspell
will go through the following steps to find a dictionary.

1) If the master options is set.  Look for a dictionary of that name.  If
one could not be found complain.
2) If the --language-tag or LANG variable is set and master is not then
use it (giving preference to --language-tag over LANG) to search for an
appropriate dictionary.
3) If 2 fails than look for a dictionary of the same name of current
setting of the lang options (even if it is an invalid lang).
4) If all else fails complain.

The fact that --lang=american works when LANG is not set is an
implementation detail and should not be relied on as american is not a
valid Aspell language.

---
Kevin Atkinson
kevina at users sourceforge net
http://www.ibiblio.org/kevina/