spell 1.0 bug report

[Karl Berry]

Hi Giacomo,

Congratulations on the first release of spell in 15 years!

I have a few niggling things to report:

In spell.texi, please change prints to Prints in the @direntry:
* spell: (spell).               Prints each misspelled word.

spell.texi doesn't mention the --ispell option.

spell --help doesn't mention -I.  (I may have missed other option
consistencies.)

texinfo.tex should be included in the distribution.  The install-sh,
mkinstalldirs, INSTALL, and fdl.texi files are a bit stale.  You can get
them all from gnulib, http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnulib.

Assorted copyright messages say 2010.  Should be updated to 2011.  For
the --version output, it's best to say *only* 2011, skip the 1996.

spell.texi says to send bugs to bug-gnu-utils, but spell --help gives
your personal address.  They should be consistent.  And over time, it
seems a mailing list (and archives) always turns out to be useful, so I
recommend going that way.  If you don't want to bother seeing all the
unrelated mail to bug-gnu-utils, I suggest setting up a separate
bug-spell list.  Probably that's cleanest anyway.  You can do this
through the "mailing lists" feature on savannah ...

The README still gives Thomas's email address.  It should give whatever
address is settled on.

I didn't realize that spell was implemented as a wrapper.  I think it
would be useful to provide a way to pass arbitrary options to the spell
program.  --Xspell=--foo --Xspell=bar could pass "--foo", "bar"?  But
this is just a wishlist item if you're bored.

More important, it would be good for the manual to either explain how
people can create a list of exceptions (that is, a personal dictionary,
words that spell reports but that aren't misspelled), or explicitly say
that spell's interface to [ai]spell doesn't support that.  (And if it
doesn't support it, it should :).  E.g., --exception-list=FILE.  More
wishlist.) Exceptions are one thing everyone wants.

Finally, since Aspell is a GNU package and Ispell isn't, I think spell
should use aspell by default, and link to the Aspell manual:
@xref{Top,, Introduction, aspell, Aspell}

Let me know if any questions or problems, of course ...

Happy hacking!

karl