[Aspell-user] Hyphens and apostrophes in words

[Ciarán Ó Duibhín]

I'd like to know which, if any, spellcheckers can be configured to act like 
this.  (The examples are from English but the real need comes from other 
languages.)  Asking here about aspell particularly, of course.

First, if necessary, allow the dictionary to contain words with apostrophe "'" 
and hyphen "-" in any position. (I am aware of the side-effects of this and am 
not worried by them.)

Now, when checking text:

1. Accept a word containing a hyphen if EITHER the dictionary contains the 
whole word including the hyphen ("hotch-potch") OR if the dictionary contains 
both parts separately ("half-moon").

2. With a dictionary containing "'twas" but not "twas", accept "'twas".

3. With a dictionary containing "well" but not "'well", not accept "'well".

That's what I would like to happen, and it seems to me not unreasonable.

In some experiments, Aspell (0.50-3 in Windows) did not do what I wanted in any 
of these cases.  But perhaps I'm omitting to do something, or perhaps other 
implementations behave differently, or later versions.
The spellchecker in MSWord passes all the tests, but unfortunately it is not 
available for use in other applications.
I haven't been able to test Hunspell.

I would be interested to hear anyone else's evidence or experiences.

Ciarán Ó Duibhín.