[Bug 619015] [NEW] dictionaries-common versions of ispell.el and flyspell.el break recent emacsen

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You have been subscribed to a public bug by Evan Broder (broder):

Binary package hint: dictionaries-common

Emacs users who want to use flyspell (wavy underlines under misspelled
words as you type) cannot on Maverick.  The root cause was a change in
the Emacs Lisp syntax which breaks older versions of dictionaries-
common.

TEST CASE: start Emacs, type Esc x flyspell-mode <ret> or equivalently
enable Flyspell from Customize or the menu.

Failure scenario: an error message "Enabling flyspell-mode gave an
error." (sic)

Success scenario: "Starting new ispell process ..."

A minimal patch is attached to this bug.  Upgrading dictionaries-common
to upstream 1.5.12 should be equivalent.  Natty now ships 1.5.15 (bug
#660367).  Maverick has 1.5.11.

The fix in 1.5.12 should be compatible with older Emacs versions;
emacs22 (and to a limited extent xemacs21) should continue to work,
while this fixes flyspell for emacs23 and emacs-snapshot users.

--- Previous version of Bug Description: ---

Please remove the following files from dictionaries-common:

/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/debian-ispell.el
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell.el
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.el

They are already provided with the emacs packages (emacs23-common and emacs-snapshot-common) and the versions provided with dictionaries-common are currently incompatible with the ones that are included in the emacs23-package:
When these files are installed any attempt to enable on-the-fly spell checking e.G. by M-x flyspell-mode will result in a generic error message:

Enabling flyspell-mode gave an error.

No debug info. And even if debug-on-error is set the error message is
generated without setting any trigger for the debugger. Took me 2 hours
to track this error down.

WORKAROUND: to fix this in a live system, remove the byte-compiled .elc
files for your emacs flavor, too.  For example, if you use emacs23;

cd /usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/dictionaries-common
sudo rm *.el *.elc

After removing the files spell checking while typing in emacs works fine
again.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: dictionaries-common 1.5.11ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-15.21-generic 2.6.35.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-15-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Aug 17 03:51:38 2010
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: dictionaries-common

** Affects: dictionaries-common (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Fix Released

** Affects: dictionaries-common (Debian)
     Importance: Unknown
         Status: Unknown


** Tags: apport-bug i386 maverick patch
-- 
dictionaries-common versions of ispell.el and flyspell.el break recent emacsen
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/619015
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