About Hunspell
--------------
Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyzer library and program
designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding or
character encoding. Hunspell interfaces: Ispell-like terminal interface
using Curses library, Ispell pipe interface, OpenOffice.org UNO module.
Hunspell's code base comes from the OpenOffice.org MySpell
(http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/MySpell-3.zip). See README.MYSPELL,
AUTHORS.MYSPELL and license.myspell files.
Hunspell is designed to eventually replace Myspell in OpenOffice.org.
Main features of Hunspell spell checker and morphological analyzer:
- Unicode support (affix rules work only with the first 65535 Unicode characters)
- Morphological analysis (in custom item and arrangement style) and stemming
- Max. 65535 affix classes and twofold affix stripping (for agglutinative
languages, like Azeri, Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, etc.)
- Support complex compoundings (for example, Hungarian and German)
- Support language specific features (for example, special casing of
Azeri and Turkish dotted i, or German sharp s)
- Handle conditional affixes, circumfixes, fogemorphemes,
forbidden words, pseudoroots and homonyms.
- Free software (LGPL, GPL, MPL tri-license)
Compiling on Unix/Linux
-----------------------
./configure
make
make install
For dictionary development, use the --with-warnings option of configure.
For interactive user interface of Hunspell executable, use the --with-ui option.
The developer packages you need to compile Hunspell's interface:
glibc-devel
optional developer packages:
ncurses (need for --with-ui)
readline (for fancy input line editing,
configure parameter: --with-readline)
locale and gettext (but you can also use the
--with-included-gettext configure parameter)
Hunspell distribution uses new Autoconf (2.59) and Automake (1.9).
Compiling on Windows
--------------------
1. Compiling with Windows SDK
Download the free Windows SDK of Microsoft, open a command prompt
window and cd into hunspell/src/win_api. Use the following command
to compile hunspell:
vcbuild
2. Compiling in Cygwin environment
Download and install Cygwin environment for Windows with the following
extra packages:
make
gcc-g++ development package
mingw development package (for cygwin.dll free native Windows compilation)
ncurses, readline (for user interface)
iconv (character conversion)
2.1. Cygwin1.dll dependent compiling
Open a Cygwin shell, cd into the hunspell root directory:
./configure
make
make install
For dictionary development, use the --with-warnings option of configure.
For interactive user interface of Hunspell executable, use the --with-ui option.
readline configure parameter: --with-readline (for fancy input line editing)
1.2. Cygwin1.dll free compiling
Open a Cygwin shell, cd into the hunspell/src/win_api and
make -f Makefile.cygwin
Testing
-------
Testing Hunspell (see tests in tests/ subdirectory):
make check
or with Valgrind debugger:
make check
VALGRIND=[Valgrind_tool] make check
For example:
make check
VALGRIND=memcheck make check
Documentation
-------------
features and dictionary format:
man 4 hunspell
man hunspell
hunspell -h
http://hunspell.sourceforge.net
Usage
-----
The src/tools dictionary contains ten executables after compiling
(or some of them are in the src/win_api):
affixcompress: dictionary generation from large (millions of words) vocabularies
analyze: example of spell checking, stemming and morphological analysis
chmorph: example of automatic morphological generation and conversion
example: example of spell checking and suggestion
hunspell: main program for spell checking and others (see manual)
hunzip: decompressor of hzip format
hzip: compressor of hzip format
makealias: alias compression (Hunspell only, not back compatible with MySpell)
munch: dictionary generation from vocabularies (it needs an affix file, too).
unmunch: list all recognized words of a MySpell dictionary
wordforms: word generation (Hunspell version of unmunch)
After compiling and installing (see INSTALL) you can
run the Hunspell spell checker (compiled with user interface)
with a Hunspell or Myspell dictionary:
hunspell -d en_US text.txt
or without interface:
hunspell
hunspell -d en_UK -l <text.txt
Dictionaries consist of an affix and dictionary file, see tests/
or http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries.
Using Hunspell library with GCC
-------------------------------
Including in your program:
#include <hunspell.hxx>
Linking with Hunspell static library:
g++ -lhunspell example.cxx
Dictionaries
------------
Myspell & Hunspell dictionaries:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries
Aspell dictionaries (need some conversion):
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict
Conversion steps: see relevant feature request at http://hunspell.sf.net.
László Németh
nemeth at OOo
