Re: ispell.el and pipes

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: André A. Gomes <andremegafone@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 17:42:53 +0300
> 
> In the beginning was Ispell (the spelling program) and ispell.el (the
> Emacs interface).  The communication is via pipes or ptys.
> 
> But today there's Aspell (among others), which provides an external C
> API.
> 
> Could Emacs leverage it?  What are the pros and cons of pipes/ptys and
> the C API for Emacs' sake?

The main con is that Someone™ will have to write the code to use the C
API and integrate that into ispell.el.  There are also other cons:

  . the C API provided by Aspell isn't shared by other spell-checkers
    we support (AFAIK)
  . using the C API will need Emacs to be linked against the Aspell
    library, which makes the build requirements and procedures more
    complex
  . different versions of Aspell may introduce binary
    incompatibilities, whose accommodation in Emacs will complicate
    our own code