From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 11:32:54 EDT
At 03:02 PM 6/3/02 +0100, F J Franklin wrote:
>On Sun, 2 Jun 2002, Andrew W. Nosenko wrote:
>> Sorry if this question is too stupid from your point of view, but:
>> how I can configure AbiWord to use system-wide ispell dictionaries?
>
>The NetBSD port patches abiword to use NetBSD system ispell dictionaries,
>so it is certainly possible - but you won't get much support from the
>AbiWord developers if you take that route.
>
>debian builds abiword to use pspell/aspell and uses debian system
>aspell/ispell hashes.
>
>what operating system / architecture are you using?
>
>the basic problem with ispell hashes is that they are hideously
>unportable. ispell has a number of compile-time options that affect the
>hash format, and compiler/architecture probably affects it as well...
>
>abiword has a particular choice of settings and I have an x86 and ppc set
>up to build hashes with those settings - chances are your distribution
>uses different settings.
As Frank said, this is a FAQ. He's right that the underlying problem is the
unpleasant historical fact that ispell hashes can be (and thus are) built in
a number of distro-specific, endian-specific ways. Given the current state
of our codebase, we expect a specific permutation, and refuse to load other
permutations. Thus, we ship as many dictionaries in that format as we can.
However, I'd also like to point out that this entire category of problems
could be solved *permanently* by a sufficiently-clever programmer who's
willing to:
Do the ugly, thankless work needed to allow us to load *any*
commonly-available variant of the ispell hash formats, instead
of just one.
For some hints on the work required to do so, see:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/April/1030.html
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/March/0769.html
To date, we haven't found any volunteers who are both brave enough and
talented enough to tackle this, but I'm still hopeful that we will. :-)
Paul
motto -- it's an ugly job, but somebody's gotta do it
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