spell

[Greg Booth]

On 7/3/07, adams <k7qo at commspeed.net> wrote:
>
> I must be getting too old for Unix and Linux.
>
> I have been creating a document
>
> http://www.commspeed.net/k7qo/NECpart1.pdf
>
>
> Now I defy any one to create this using OpenOffice Writer.
> Can't be done.  You have to use LaTeX.  Period.  QED.
>
> One of things that I got around to doing was spell checking
> the document.  My first pass was to use "spell".  Not installed
> and not available.  Sorry to see it gone after all these  years.
>
> You could "spell filename" and get only the words that did not
> match words in /usr/share/dict/words.  Then I could sed or vi
> the control words out and have just the words that weren't found.
>
> OK.  apropos spell  and find "ispell",so  "ispell filename" and
> I get back
>
> Can't open /usr/lib/ispell/default.hash
>
>
> Easy fix?  An error in the distro?  Would a newbee know how to fix
> this?  I don't, but than again I'm not the smartest guy on the block.
> :-)
>
> So, what I did do was "abiword filename" and thanks to Richard
> Brodie's idea of the squiggly red underline for bad words, I
> was able to muddle through and get the words eliminated that
> were not spelled correctly.
>
> Can I get spell back?  Please.  Pretty please.  Do I have to
> write it from scratch?
>
> Thanks in advance.  I'm still thinking that GUI's are not the
> way to go.......  At least don't kill me off by killing off
> the tools that I use or need.
>
> FYI
>
> Chuck Adams, PhD, retired rocket scientist

Spell seems to be in the repositories ?

apt-cache search spell | grep -w spell shows

spell - GNU Spell, a clone of Unix `spell'

and apt-cache show spell shows

Description: GNU Spell, a clone of Unix `spell'
 GNU Spell is a spell checking program which prints each misspelled word on a
 line of its own. It is designed as a clone of the standard Unix `spell'
 program, and implemented as a wrapper for Ispell. Spell accepts as its
 arguments a list of files to read from. Within that list, the magical file name
 `-' causes Spell to read from standard input. In addition, when called with no
 file name arguments, Spell assumes that it should process standard input.
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu

A quick install later I try spell <filename> and sure enough it spits
out the names of some of my friends in a list I had in my home
directory that wouldn't show up in a dictionary...

Hope this helps.

Greg Booth