bug#49039: Aspell in Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: henri-biard@francemel.fr
> Cc: 49039@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2021 17:09:32 +0200 (CEST)
> 
> Currently, I can only find a brief mention in
> 
> 16.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling

It isn't a brief mention, it's a whole section dedicated to
spell-checking commands.

> It is unfortunate that emacs are still uses the name "ispell" because it 
> erroneously
> makes believe that one is making use of ispell, even thogh one in using 
> ispell.

If you read that section, you will realize that "ispell" is the name
of the Lisp package, and does not mean we only use "ispell" the
program.  That section says so at its very beginning.

> Would you seriously consider have a generic spell framework for emacs that
> one can set up to use ispell, aspell etc.

We already have such a generic framework.

> In my opinion, the default should be set
> to use aspell because its manual says that it ought to do a superior job and 
> is intended
> to replace ispell. 

The default is already aspell:

  (defcustom ispell-program-name
    (or (executable-find "aspell")
        (executable-find "ispell")
        (executable-find "hunspell")
        "ispell")

As you see, Emacs looks for a program in the order shown above, with
aspell being the first one.

> Does one use the command this way
> 
> (setq ispell-program-name "aspell)
> 
> or this way
> 
> (setq ispell-program-name "/usr/bin/aspell")

If aspell is on PATH, it doesn't matter which form you use.  If it is
not on PATH, then you should use the absolute file name.