GNU Aspell 0.60 Released

August 27, 2004


GNU Aspell 0.60 is now available at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/aspell-0.60.tar.gz

GNU Aspell is a Free 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 superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language. Unlike Ispell, Aspell can also easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special dictionary. Aspell will also do its best to respect the current locale setting. Other advantages over Ispell include support for using multiple dictionaries at once and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one Aspell process is open at once.

Additional information on GNU Aspell can be found at http://aspell.net.

The two major changes in this release, as compared to 0.50.5, are support for affix compression and better Unicode support.

Complete list of changes from 0.50.5:


With support for affix compression finally being implement Aspell should be able to replace Ispell for most tasks. The only major feature that Ispell has which Aspell does not is a nroff filter, which can easilly be corrected if someone who knows nroff well is willing to work with me to add it.

With the release of GNU Aspell 0.60 it is my sincere hope that GNU Aspell can replace Ispell as the de facto spell checker for all free operating systems and possible all Unix like systems. All known Ispell dictionaries have been converted to Aspell format, except for Albanian (sq) as I was unable to find the source word list.


GNU Aspell can support any of the following languages, many of which already have dictionaries available:

   Code Language Name           Dictionary     Gettext
                                Available      Translation

   aa   Afar                    -              -
   af   Afrikaans               0.50           -
   ak   Akan                    -              -
   am   Amharic                 Planned        -
   ar   Arabic                  Planned        -
   as   Assamese                -              -
   ast  Asturian / Bable        Maybe          -
   av   Avar                    -              -
   ay   Aymara                  -              -
   az   Azerbaijani             0.60           -

   ba   Bashkir                 -              -
   ban  Balinese                Maybe          -
   be   Belarusian              0.50           Incomplete
   bem  Bemba                   Maybe          -
   bg   Bulgarian               0.50           -
   bh   Bihari                  -              -
   bi   Bislama                 Maybe          -
   bm   Bambara                 -              -
   bn   Bengali                 0.60           -
   bo   Tibetan                 -              -
   br   Breton                  0.50           -
   bs   Bosnian                 Maybe          -

   ca   Catalan / Valencian     0.50           -
   ce   Chechen                 -              -
   ceb  Cebuano                 Maybe          -
   ch   Chamorro                Maybe          -
   co   Corsican                Maybe          -
   cs   Czech                   0.50           Yes
   cv   Chuvash                 -              -
   cy   Welsh                   0.50           -

   da   Danish                  0.50           Incomplete
   de   German                  0.50           Yes

   ee   Ewe                     -              -
   el   Greek                   0.50           -
   en   English                 0.50           Yes
   eo   Esperanto               0.50           -
   es   Spanish                 0.50           Incomplete
   et   Estonian                0.60           -
   eu   Basque                  Maybe          -

   fa   Persian                 Maybe          -
   ff   Fulah                   -              -
   fi   Finnish                 0.60           -
   fj   Fijian                  Maybe          -
   fo   Faroese                 0.50           -
   fr   French                  0.50           Yes
   fur  Friulian                Maybe          -
   fy   Frisian                 Maybe          -

   ga   Irish                   0.50           Yes
   gd   Scottish Gaelic         0.50           -
   gl   Gallegan                0.50           -
   gn   Guarani                 Maybe          -
   gu   Gujarati                Maybe          -
   gv   Manx Gaelic             0.50           -

   ha   Hausa                   Maybe          -
   haw  Hawaiian                Maybe          -
   he   Hebrew                  0.60           -
   hi   Hindi                   Maybe          -
   hil  Hiligaynon              Maybe          -
   ho   Hiri Motu               -              -
   hr   Croatian                0.50           -
   hsb  Upper Sorbian           0.60           -
   ht   Haitian Creole          Maybe          -
   hu   Hungarian               0.60           -
   hy   Armenian                -              -
   hz   Herero                  -              -

   ia   Interlingua (IALA)      0.50           -
   iba  Iban                    Maybe          -
   id   Indonesian              0.50           -
   ig   Igbo                    Maybe          -
   ii   Sichuan Yi              -              -
   ilo  Iloko                   Maybe          -
   io   Ido                     -              -
   is   Icelandic               0.50           -
   it   Italian                 0.50           -

   jv   Javanese                -              -

   ka   Georgian                -              -
   kac  Kachin                  Maybe          -
   kg   Kongo                   Maybe          -
   ki   Kikuyu / Gikuyu         -              -
   kj   Kwanyama                -              -
   kk   Kazakh                  -              -
   kl   Kalaallisut /           Maybe          -
        Greenlandic
   kn   Kannada                 -              -
   kok  Konkani                 Maybe          -
   kr   Kanuri                  -              -
   ks   Kashmiri                -              -
   ku   Kurdish                 Maybe          -

   kv   Komi                    -              -
   kw   Cornish                 Maybe          -
   ky   Kirghiz                 -              -

   la   Latin                   0.60           -
   lb   Luxembourgish           Maybe          -
   lg   Ganda                   Maybe          -
   li   Limburgian              Maybe          -
   ln   Lingala                 Maybe          -
   lt   Lithuanian              0.60           -
   lu   Luba-Katanga            -              -
   luo  Luo (Kenya and          Maybe          -
        Tanzania)
   lv   Latvian                 0.60           -

   mg   Malagasy                Maybe          -
   mh   Marshallese             Maybe          -
   mi   Maori                   0.50           -
   min  Minangkabau             Maybe          -
   mk   Macedonian              0.50           -
   ml   Malayalam               Maybe          -
   mn   Mongolian               0.60           Yes
   mo   Moldavian               -              -
   mr   Marathi                 Maybe          -
   ms   Malay                   0.50           -
   mt   Maltese                 0.50           -
   my   Burmese                 -              -

   nb   Norwegian Bokmal        0.50           -
   nd   North Ndebele           Maybe          -
   nds  Low Saxon               Maybe          -
   ne   Nepali                  Maybe          -
   ng   Ndonga                  Maybe          -
   nl   Dutch                   0.50           Yes
   nn   Norwegian Nynorsk       0.50           -
   nr   South Ndebele           -              -
   nso  Northern Sotho          Maybe          -
   nv   Navajo                  -              -
   ny   Nyanja                  0.50           -

   oc   Occitan / Provencal     Maybe          -
   om   Oromo                   -              -
   or   Oriya                   -              -
   os   Ossetic                 -              -

   pa   Punjabi                 -              -
   pam  Pampanga                Maybe          -
   pap  Papiamento              Maybe          -
   pl   Polish                  0.50           -
   ps   Pushto                  -              -
   pt   Portuguese              0.50           Incomplete

   qu   Quechua                 0.60           -

   rn   Rundi                   Maybe          -
   ro   Romanian                0.50           Incomplete
   ru   Russian                 0.50           Yes
   rw   Kinyarwanda             0.50           -

   sc   Sardinian               0.50           -
   sd   Sindhi                  -              -
   se   Northern Sami           Maybe          -
   sg   Sango                   -              -
   si   Sinhalese               -              -
   sk   Slovak                  0.50           -
   sl   Slovenian               0.50           -
   sm   Samoan                  Maybe          -
   sn   Shona                   Maybe          -
   so   Somali                  Maybe          -
   sq   Albanian                Maybe          -
   sr   Serbian                 Maybe          Incomplete
   ss   Swati                   Maybe          -
   st   Southern Sotho          Maybe          -
   su   Sundanese               Maybe          -
   sv   Swedish                 0.50           -
   sw   Swahili                 0.50           -

   ta   Tamil                   0.60           -
   te   Telugu                  Maybe          -
   tet  Tetum                   0.50           -
   tg   Tajik                   Maybe          Incomplete
   ti   Tigrinya                Maybe          -
   tk   Turkmen                 Planned        -
   tl   Tagalog                 0.50           -
   tn   Tswana                  0.50           -
   to   Tonga                   Maybe          -
   tpi  Tok Pisin               Maybe          -
   tr   Turkish                 0.50           -
   ts   Tsonga                  Maybe          -
   tt   Tatar                   -              -
   tw   Twi                     -              -
   ty   Tahitian                Maybe          -

   ug   Uighur                  -              -
   uk   Ukrainian               0.50           Yes
   ur   Urdu                    Maybe          -
   uz   Uzbek                   0.60           -

   ve   Venda                   Maybe          -
   vi   Vietnamese              0.60           -

   wa   Walloon                 0.50           Incomplete
   wo   Wolof                   -              -

   xh   Xhosa                   Maybe          -

   yi   Yiddish                 0.60           -
   yo   Yoruba                  -              -

   za   Zhuang                  -              -
   zu   Zulu                    0.50           -

Dictionaries marked as "0.50" are available for Aspell 0.50. Ones marked as "0.60" are available for Aspell 0.60 only. Ones marked as "Planned" should eventually be available. Ones marked as "Maybe" might be available in the future. See http://aspell.net/man-html/Planned-Dictionaries.html for more info.

Dictionaries can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/


Finally, if you wish to support the continuing development of Aspell please consider donating. Your donation will encouraging me, Kevin Atkinson, to continue to spend my time developing Aspell. Without your support Aspell may go into another period of non-development as was the case for most of 2003.

If you wish to contribute a modest amount of money you can do so now by using the SourceForge donation system: http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=245.

If you wish to talk to me (as in over the phone) before contributing money, or wish to only contribute money towards development of a certain area of Aspell, this can be arranged.


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