ASPELL(L)                                               ASPELL(L)



NAME
       aspell - An interactive spell checker

SYNOPSIS
       aspell [options] <command>

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual page documents briefly the aspell interactive
       spell checker.  This  manual  page  was  written  for  the
       Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program
       does not have a manual page.  Instead, it  has  documenta-
       tion in HTML and text formats; see below.

       aspell  is  a  utility  that can function as a 'ispell -a'
       replacement, as an independent spell checker,  as  a  test
       utility  to  test out Aspell features and as a utility for
       managing dictionaries.

OPTIONS
       <command> is one of:

       check <file>
              to check a file

       pipe   'ispell -a' compatible mode

       config dump the current configuration to stdout

       filter passes standard input through the same set of  fil-
              ters that would be used to spell check a document

       help   print online help

       version
              print version number and exit

       dump|create|merge master|personal|repl [word list]
              dump,  creates  or  merges  a  master,  personal or
              replacement word list

       [options] is one of:

       --conf=<file>
              main configuration file

       --conf-dir=<dir>
              directory containing the main configuration file

       --data-dir=<dir>
              directory containing the language data files

       --dict-dir=<dir>
              directory containing the main word list

       --add|rem-filter=<str>
              add or remove a filter

       --home-dir=<dir>
              directory containing personal configuration files

       -W,--ignore=<n>
              where n is an integer.  Ignore words less  than  or
              equal to n characters

       --[dont-]ignore-case
              ignore case when checking words

       --[dont-]ignore-repl
              ignore commands to store replacement pairs

       --lang=<str>
              default language to use

       -d, --master=<name>
              main word list base name

       --mode=<str>
              set  filter  mode  to  str.   Where str is one of -
              none, url, email, sgml, tex

       -e, --mode=email
              enter email mode

       -H, --mode=sgml
              enter html/sgml mode

       -t, --mode=tex
              enter TEX mode

       --per-conf=<file>
              personal configuration file

       --personal=<file>
              personal word list file

       --repl=<file>
              replacements list file name

       --sug-mode=<mode>
              suggestion mode.  Where mode is one of - fast, nor-
              mal, bad-spellers

       Plus options to modify the behavior of the various filter:

       --add|rem-email-quote=<char>
              email quote characters

       --email-margin=<integer>
              number of characters that  can  appear  before  the
              quote character

       --add|rem-sgml-check=<str>
              add or remove SGML tags to always check

       --add|rem-sgml-extension=<str>
              add or remove SGML file extensions

       --add|rem-tex-command=<str>
              add or remove TEX commands

       --add|rem-tex-check-comments=<str>
              check TEX comments

       In  addition,  there  are  some  aspell  utility  specific
       options:

       -b,--backup
              create a backup file by  appending  '.bak'  to  the
              file name. (Only applies when the command is check)

       -x, --dont-backup
              dont create backup file

       --[dont-]time
              [dont] time load time and suggest time in pipe mode

       --[dont-]reverse
              [dont] reverse the order of the suggestions list

       In  addition aspell will try to make sense out of ispell's
       command line options so that it can function as a drop  in
       replacement for ispell.  If aspell is run without any com-
       mand line options it will display a brief help screen  and
       quit.


CONFIGURATION
       aspell can also make use of a global or user configuration
       file.  Each line of the configuration file has the format:

       <option> [args]

       where  <option> is any one of the standard library options
       above without the leading dashes.  For example the follow-
       ing line will set the default language to german:

       lang german

       Anything  after  a  '#' on a line is ignored.  Use 'aspell
       dump config' to find out how your installation  of  aspell
       is  configured.   The environment variable ASPELL_CONF may
       also be used and it overrides any option set in the config
       file.  The format of the string is exactly the same as the
       configuration file except that semicolons (';')  are  used
       as delimiters instead if newlines.

       The    global    configuration    file   for   aspell   is
       /etc/aspell.conf and the per user  configuration  file  is
       ~/.aspell.conf

SEE ALSO
       run-with-aspell(l), word-list-compress(s).

       aspell  is  fully  documented  in  the aspell-doc package.
       Install  that  package  and   see   /usr/share/doc/aspell-
       doc/man-html and /usr/share/doc/aspell-doc/man-text.

AUTHOR
       This  manual  page was written by Sudhakar Chandrasekharan
       <thaths@netscape.com>, for  the  Debian  GNU/Linux  system
       (but may be used by others).



                                                        ASPELL(L)