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Next: 2. Getting Started Up: GNU Aspell 0.50.5 Previous: Contents   
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Subsections

  * 1.1 Comparison to other spell checker engines
      + 1.1.1 Comparison to Ispell
          o 1.1.1.1 Features that only Aspell has
          o 1.1.1.2 Things that, currently, only Ispell have

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1. Introduction

GNU Aspell is a spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. It
can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its
main feature is that it does a much better job of coming up with possible
suggestions than just about any other spell checker out there for the
English language, including Ispell and Microsoft Word. It also has many
other technical enhancements over Ispell such as using shared memory for
dictionaries and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more
than one Aspell process is open at once.

1.1 Comparison to other spell checker engines



+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                        | Aspell | Ispell |  Netscape  | Microsoft Word |
|                        |        |        |    4.0     |       97       |
|------------------------+--------+--------+------------+----------------|
|            Open Source | x      |   x    |            |                |
|------------------------+--------+--------+------------+----------------|
|             Suggestion | 88-98  |   54   |   55-70?   |       71       |
|           Intelligence |        |        |            |                |
|------------------------+--------+--------+------------+----------------|
|       Personal part of | x      |   x    |     x      |                |
|            Suggestions |        |        |            |                |
|------------------------+--------+--------+------------+----------------|
| Alternate Dictionaries | x      |   x    |     ?      |       ?        |
|------------------------+--------+--------+------------+----------------|
|  International Support | x      |   x    |     ?      |       ?        |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+



The suggestion Intelligence is based on a small test kernel of misspelled/
correct word pairs. Go to http://aspell.net/test for more info and how you
can help contribute to the test kernel. The current scores for Aspell are
88 in fast mode, 93 in normal mode, and 98 in bad spellers mode see
section 4.4.4 for more information about the various suggestion modes.

If you have any other information you would like to add to this chart
please contact me at kevina@gnu.org.

1.1.1 Comparison to Ispell

1.1.1.1 Features that only Aspell has

  * Does a much better job with coming up with suggestions than Ispell
    does or for that matter any other spell checker I have seen. If you
    know a spell checker that does a better job please let me know.
  * Can learn from users misspellings.
  * Is an actual library that others programs can link to instead of
    having to use it through a pipe.
  * Is multiprocess intelligent. When a personal dictionary (or
    replacement list) is saved it will now first update the list against
    the dictionary on disk in case another process modified it.
  * Can share the memory used in the main word list between processes.
  * Support for detachable dictionaries so that more than one aspell class
    can use the same dictionary.
  * Support for multiple personal dictionaries as well as support for
    special auxiliary dictionaries.
  * Better support for run-together words.
  * Ability to use multiple dictionaries by simply specifying it on the
    command line or in the configuration files.
  * A better, more complete word list for the English language. Word lists
    are provided for American, British, and Canadian spelling. Special
    care has been taken to only include one spelling for each word in any
    particular word list. The word list included in Ispell by contrast
    only included support for American and British and also tends to
    included multiple spellings for a word which can mask some spelling
    errors.

1.1.1.2 Things that, currently, only Ispell have

  * Support for affix compression (However this will change with Aspell
    0.51)
  * Lower memory footprint
  * Perhaps better support for spell checking (La)TEX files.
  * Support for spell checking Nroff files.

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next up previous contents
Next: 2. Getting Started Up: GNU Aspell 0.50.5 Previous: Contents   
Contents
Kevin Atkinson 2004-02-10
