Re: [aspell-devel] remove from word lists

[Jose Da Silva]

On Wednesday 16 February 2005 12:59 am, Anton Leuski wrote:
> I guess it's not possible to remove words from the personal and session
> word lists, right? When I try the remove method   on a personal word
> list from a Speller instance it comes back with
>
> The method "remove" is unimplemented in "WritableDict"

1)There was some talk about removing "word-lists":
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/aspell-devel/2004-11/msg00018.html

2)This would imply that you need to "edit" out the individual word, then 
rebuild again:
http://aspell.sourceforge.net/man-html/Creating-an-Individual-Word-List.html

3)and this appears to state you need to do it using another editor:
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/users/2003-May/009353.html

> Or am I missing something? Can you give me any advice on how implement
> the remove method? Or (even better :-)) when is it going to implemented
> in the main code base?

If you have a patch, please send it in, otherwise, lacking a remove feature, 
you may best be following the suggestions shown in #3 above. Quote:
----------------
The personal dictionary is stored in ~/.aspell.en.pws (for English;
other languages work analogously, I imagine).  It's a text file with one
word per line.  Edit out the errant word to remove it.
----------------

At this point in time, most users would probably be trying to add words to a 
dictionary so the idea you suggest of removing words probably hasn't come up 
often.

The question you ask about removing a word may be a good idea with a personal 
dictionary but has a few interesting quirks when speaking of a "common" 
dictionary. For example, in the common dictionary, would you want it to be 
something "blacklisted" from one user (let us suppose, a young kid doesn't 
need to see some dirty words at their age yet), or is it something that is 
definitely in error and should be completely removed?

In a personal computer, where there is only one user, the common dictionaries 
could be treated as personal dictionaries, so editing would be an easy 
question, however, in a Unix type of environment, and Windows NT (or higher) 
there is also the question of "ownership" of files that come into play. 
Would you want 1 user to be able to remove a word seen by all users of that 
dictionary?.... for example, a workplace, library, or other spot where many 
users use such a machine?

Just some thoughts.

If you have a patch or fix (partial or complete), please send one in to 
sourceforge.