GNU Aspell 0.50 is now Available

[Kevin Atkinson]

GNU Aspell is a Free spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell.
It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its
main feature is that it does a much better job of coming up with possible
suggestions than just about any other spell checker out there for the
English language, including Ispell and Microsoft Word. It also has many
other technical enhancements over Ispell such as using shared memory for
dictionaries and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more
than one Aspell process is open at once.  The ultimate goal of GNU Aspell
is to become the standard spell checker for GNU/Linux and other Free
operating systems.

This release of Aspell is the first version of Aspell as an official
GNU Package.  It is a combination of the original Aspell and Pspell
which should be as least as stable as the original Aspell/Pspell
combination.  The source code has been completely reorganized in the
process of the merge which should make it significantly easier for
others to maintain.  Being a single package, it should also be easier
to install and package.

>From an end-users stand point GNU Aspell has several small yet
significant enhancements over the original Aspell including an
improved spell checking interface which includes the ability to use
Ispell key bindings when checking documents, support for the Dvorak
keyboard layout, and an enhanced command line interface which includes
support for listing the available dictionaries and printing out the
value of an individual configuration option.

Unfortunately, Kevin Atkinson, the sole maintainer of GNU Aspell has
very little time to maintain and develop future versions of Aspell.
Thus, he is desperately looking for someone to help with the maintenance
and development of Aspell.  A lot of tasks need to be done before
Kevin will consider Aspell complete, but without some outside help GNU
Aspell will probably never make it.

More information on GNU Aspell, including how to get it and ways
others can help, can be found at http://aspell.net.

-- 
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org