Re: [Texmacs-dev] Spell checking

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003, David Allouche wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 12:20:45PM +0200, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > > > What would you think is the correct way to locate the dictionnary?
> > That is the real question.
> >
> > > Maybe a setting in preferences with the default as you have it
> >
> > This can indeed be done, but we really should not rely on it:
> > a random user expects spell checking just to work if ispell or
> > aspell is installed, so we should do our ultimate best to
> > make TeXmacs detect the right location.
> >
> > So if a dictionary is installed but not found by TeXmacs,
> > then please send me a report with the missing location.
>
> In the "let the packager do it" philosophy, I think we should not try
> too hard.

That is not the TeXmacs policy.
Our policy is to ease the life of end-users as much as possible.

> Just look in a few standard places (/usr/lib/ispell,
> /usr/local/lib/ispell, /opt/lib/ispell),

Yes, but I have to know these "few standard places".

> provide a compile-time option
> to let the packager set it to the correct default for the system and
> use an environment variable for corner cases.

I am not sure that this will help a lot.

> The real problem is more that the name mappings may be system
> dependant... maybe there should be a specific mapping file to do this.
> Maybe the ispell developper have some insight on how to it correctly.

Yes, if someone is willing to contact the ispell/aspell developers and
ask them how we are supposed to do this...

> Generally, I think texmacs should not "try hard" to guess the system
> settings, that makes it less predictable and it will never be enough
> (unless there is a specific right way to do it).

We have to try hard to make things as easy as possible for the end-user.