Re: [aspell-devel] Is Aspell Still Relevant in Light of Hunspell?

[Christoph Hintermüller]

Hi Kevin
Am Mittwoch, 10. Oktober 2007 20:46 schrieb Kevin Atkinson:
> Since hunspell comes out it seams like no one cares much about Aspell. For
> example, it seams that RedHat wants to completely eliminate all spell
> checkers except Hunspell:
>    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureDictionary
>
> Originally Hunspell was designed to replace MySpell in OpenOffice however
> since then it has become an independent spell checker with many of the
> same features of Ispell/Aspell.  Although it is never explicitly states
> the Hunspell is intended as a better Aspell (in fact they hardly mention
> Aspell at all), it is in a prime position to completely replace Aspell.
> In fact the most recent version even has support for "dictionary based
> phonetic suggestion" [Hunspell ChangeLog].
>
This makes some things a lot clearer to me. 

> So the question is: Do You think Aspell is still relevant in light of
> Hunspell?
>

Till now Aspell offers features wich are not yet there in hunspell. And which 
make life easier for users and developers of open source software, which 
might not obvious to the users and developers of open office. Thus it will 
still be relevant. 

I clearly prefere aspell as it offers a commandline interface, as it can be 
integrated into a prepare release target of makefiles, as it can be 
integrated into programs without the need to recompile them if inerna of 
aspell change, as there is no need to fiddle with dlload or provide a 
separate version a program for the case aspell is not available, etc.

But at least we should check how far a merge of aspell with hunspell would be 
possible, accepted and wellcomed by the hunspell crew and how far this would 
be feasible at all. Just to have a fallback scenario for the case that aspell 
will be eliminated from other important linux and bsd distributions too and 
to make users of spellchekcers aware that, there a lot more things where 
proper spelling is mandatory, asside from documents produced by word 
processors, even though they clearly dominate the spellchecking business. 

Xris


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