Alpine and Spell Check

[h***@gmail.com]

I made the switch (upgrade) to Alpine. I like the new improvements,
but I am having problems with spell check. I searched around for
others who have switch to Alpine and see some others having Spell
check problems, but I have not been successful in correcting the
problem.

Is Alpine not available with the Spell check already setup? I did go
ahead and download and install Aspell, but now that I have it
installed I receive the following message in Alpine when trying to
spell check:

[ No word lists can be found for the language "en_US". ]

I have not been able to get past this error. I like all of the
updates and changes to Alpine, but spell check is something I also
need badly. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!

John

[Marc]

Post by h***@gmail.com
Is Alpine not available with the Spell check already setup? I did go
ahead and download and install Aspell, but now that I have it
installed I receive the following message in Alpine when trying to
[ No word lists can be found for the language "en_US". ]

Er, did you install any dictionary for aspell to use? On debian for
instance, you need aspell, but then you also need the aspell-en package
for a list of english words.

In general, please be way more specific about what you did that failed
(how did you install aspell, what system are you using, how did you
install alpine, etc).

[h***@gmail.com]

Marc,

Post by Marc
Er, did you install any dictionary for aspell to use? On debian for
instance, you need aspell, but then you also need the aspell-en package
for a list of english words.

I am not sure if I installed a dictionary. I installed the Aspell
software. After seeing your reply I went back to the site to see if
there was additional information and there was referring to install a
word list (home page located at http://aspell.net/win32/). I
downloaded the flie on the page for English (http://
wordlist.sourceforge.net/) and reading through the help files it is
not clear what I am supposed to do with the Zip file.

My question is what was PC-Pine using before going to Alpine for a
spell check? Is the spell check that was in PC-Pine no longer
available in Alpine?

Post by Marc
In general, please be way more specific about what you did that failed
(how did you install aspell, what system are you using, how did you
install alpine, etc).

Using Windows XP and installed Alpine from a pre-compiled download on
the washington.edu/pine site. I then installed Aslepp using the link
listed above in my first paragraph. I am still not having any luck
getting Aspell to work with Alpine.

John

[Mark Crispin]

Post by h***@gmail.com
I am not sure if I installed a dictionary. I installed the Aspell
software.

You probably did not install any dictionary, and that is the underlying
problem.

Post by h***@gmail.com
After seeing your reply I went back to the site to see if
there was additional information and there was referring to install a
word list (home page located at http://aspell.net/win32/). I
downloaded the flie on the page for English (http://
wordlist.sourceforge.net/) and reading through the help files it is
not clear what I am supposed to do with the Zip file.

You probably downloaded the sources for the dictionary, which you will
have to build. Unless you want to do that (and I don't have a clue as to
how you would do it, since I've never touched that stuff), I suggest that
you just download and run the exe file installer which is on the
http://aspell.net/win32/ page.

Post by h***@gmail.com
My question is what was PC-Pine using before going to Alpine for a
spell check? Is the spell check that was in PC-Pine no longer
available in Alpine?

PC Pine used a proprietary spell checking package which was licensed to UW
by a vendor for use in PC Pine. This was the reason why we never released
PC Pine sources, although we always released UNIX Pine sources.

When we moved to Alpine and decided to release sources for everything, we
were obliged to remove that proprietary spell checker as we did not have
the legal right to release its sources.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by Mark Crispin
You probably did not install any dictionary, and that is the underlying
problem.

Thank you! That was the problem. I had installed the Aspell at the
link http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/w32/Aspell-0-50-3-3-Setup.exe, but
I had not downloaded and installed the dictionary listed below that in
the boxes. It is now working. Thank you!

Post by Mark Crispin
You probably downloaded the sources for the dictionary, which you will
have to build.  Unless you want to do that (and I don't have a clue as to
how you would do it, since I've never touched that stuff), I suggest that
you just download and run the exe file installer which is on thehttp://aspell.net/win32/page.

I think I also downloaded the source which I was not making heads or
tails out of. :)

Post by Mark Crispin
PC Pine used a proprietary spell checking package which was licensed to UW
by a vendor for use in PC Pine.  This was the reason why we never released
PC Pine sources, although we always released UNIX Pine sources.

That makes sense. Now that Aspell is installed, it appears that Spell
check works basically the same.

Thank you for your help and getting Spell check to once again work for
me.

John