| *spell.txt* For Vim version 7.0aa. Last change: 2005 Aug 29 |
| |
| |
| VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar |
| |
| |
| Spell checking *spell* |
| |
| 1. Quick start |spell-quickstart| |
| 2. Remarks on spell checking |spell-remarks| |
| 3. Generating a spell file |spell-mkspell| |
| 4. Spell file format |spell-file-format| |
| |
| {Vi does not have any of these commands} |
| |
| Spell checking is not available when the |+syntax| feature has been disabled |
| at compile time. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| 1. Quick start *spell-quickstart* |
| |
| This command switches on spell checking: > |
| |
| :setlocal spell spelllang=en_us |
| |
| This switches on the 'spell' option and specifies to check for US English. |
| |
| The words that are not recognized are highlighted with one of these: |
| SpellBad word not recognized |hl-SpellBad| |
| SpellCap word not capitalised |hl-SpellCap| |
| SpellRare rare word |hl-SpellRare| |
| SpellLocal wrong spelling for selected region |hl-SpellLocal| |
| |
| Vim only checks words for spelling, there is no grammar check. |
| |
| If the 'mousemodel' option is set to "popup" and the cursor is on a badly |
| spelled word or it is "popup_setpos" and the mouse pointer is on a badly |
| spelled word, then the popup menu will contain an submenu to replace the bad |
| word. Note: this slows down the appearance of the popup menu. |
| |
| To search for the next misspelled word: |
| |
| *]s* *E756* |
| ]s Move to next misspelled word after the cursor. |
| A count before the command can be used to repeat. |
| 'wrapscan' applies. |
| |
| *[s* |
| [s Like "]s" but search backwards, find the misspelled |
| word before the cursor. Doesn't recognize words |
| split over two lines, thus may stop at words that are |
| not highlighted as bad. Does not stop at word with |
| missing capital at the start of a line. |
| |
| *]S* |
| ]S Like "]s" but only stop at bad words, not at rare |
| words or words for another region. |
| |
| *[S* |
| [S Like "]S" but search backwards. |
| |
| |
| To add words to your own word list: *E764* |
| |
| *zg* |
| zg Add word under the cursor as a good word to the first |
| name in 'spellfile'. In Visual mode the selected |
| characters are added as a word (including white |
| space!). If the word is explicitly marked as bad word |
| in another spell file the result is unpredictable. |
| A count may precede the command to indicate the entry |
| in 'spellfile' to be used. A count of two uses the |
| second entry. |
| |
| *zG* |
| zG Like "zg" but add the word to the internal word list |
| |internal-wordlist|. |
| |
| *zw* |
| zw Like "zg" but mark the word as a wrong (bad) word. |
| |
| *zW* |
| zW Like "zw" but add the word to the internal word list |
| |internal-wordlist|. |
| |
| *:spe* *:spellgood* |
| :[count]spe[llgood] {word} |
| Add {word} as a good word to 'spellfile', like with |
| "zg". Without count the first name is used, with a |
| count of two the second entry, etc. |
| |
| :spe[llgood]! {word} Add {word} as a good word to the internal word list, |
| like with "zG". |
| |
| *:spellw* *:spellwrong* |
| :[count]spellw[rong] {word} |
| Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to 'spellfile', as |
| with "zw". Without count the first name is used, with |
| a count of two the second entry, etc. |
| |
| :spellw[rong]! {word} Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to the internal word |
| list. |
| |
| After adding a word to 'spellfile' with the above commands its associated |
| ".spl" file will automatically be updated and reloaded. If you change |
| 'spellfile' manually you need to use the |:mkspell| command. This sequence of |
| commands mostly works well: > |
| :edit <file in 'spellfile'> |
| < (make changes to the spell file) > |
| :mkspell! % |
| |
| More details about the 'spellfile' format below |spell-wordlist-format|. |
| |
| *internal-wordlist* |
| The internal word list is used for all buffers where 'spell' is set. It is |
| not stored, it is lost when you exit Vim. It is also cleared when 'encoding' |
| is set. |
| |
| |
| Finding suggestions for bad words: |
| *z?* |
| z? For the word under/after the cursor suggest correctly |
| spelled words. This also works to find alternatives |
| for a word that is not highlighted as a bad word, |
| e.g., when the word after it is bad. |
| The results are sorted on similarity to the word |
| under/after the cursor. |
| This may take a long time. Hit CTRL-C when you get |
| bored. |
| |
| If the command is used without a count the |
| alternatives are listed and you can enter the number |
| of your choice or press <Enter> if you don't want to |
| replace. You can also use the mouse to click on your |
| choice (only works if the mouse can be used in Normal |
| mode and when there are no line wraps). Click on the |
| first line (the header) to cancel. |
| |
| If a count is used that suggestion is used, without |
| prompting. For example, "1z?" always takes the first |
| suggestion. |
| |
| If 'verbose' is non-zero a score will be displayed |
| with the suggestions to indicate the likeliness to the |
| badly spelled word (the higher the score the more |
| different). |
| When a word was replaced the redo command "." will |
| repeat the word replacement. This works like "ciw", |
| the good word and <Esc>. This does NOT work for Thai |
| and other languages without spaces between words. |
| |
| *:spellr* *:spellrepall* *E752* *E753* |
| :spellr[epall] Repeat the replacement done by |z?| for all matches |
| with the replaced word in the current window. |
| |
| In Insert mode, when the cursor is after a badly spelled word, you can use |
| CTRL-X s to find suggestions. This works like Insert mode completion. Use |
| CTRL-N to use the next suggestion, CTRL-P to go back. |i_CTRL-X_s| |
| |
| The 'spellsuggest' option influences how the list of suggestions is generated |
| and sorted. See |'spellsuggest'|. |
| |
| The 'spellcapcheck' option is used to check the first word of a sentence |
| starts with a capital. This doesn't work for the first word in the file. |
| When there is a line break right after a sentence the highlighting of the next |
| line may be postponed. Use |CTRL-L| when needed. Also see |set-spc-auto| for |
| how it can be set automatically when 'spelllang' is set. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| 2. Remarks on spell checking *spell-remarks* |
| |
| PERFORMANCE |
| |
| Vim does on-the-fly spell checking. To make this work fast the word list is |
| loaded in memory. Thus this uses a lot of memory (1 Mbyte or more). There |
| might also be a noticeable delay when the word list is loaded, which happens |
| when 'spell' is set and when 'spelllang' is set while 'spell' was already set. |
| To minimize the delay each word list is only loaded once, it is not deleted |
| when 'spelllang' is made empty or 'spell' is reset. When 'encoding' is set |
| all the word lists are reloaded, thus you may notice a delay then too. |
| |
| |
| REGIONS |
| |
| A word may be spelled differently in various regions. For example, English |
| comes in (at least) these variants: |
| |
| en all regions |
| en_au Australia |
| en_ca Canada |
| en_gb Great Britain |
| en_nz New Zealand |
| en_us USA |
| |
| Words that are not used in one region but are used in another region are |
| highlighted with SpellLocal |hl-SpellLocal|. |
| |
| Always use lowercase letters for the language and region names. |
| |
| When adding a word with |zg| or another command it's always added for all |
| regions. You can change that by manually editing the 'spellfile'. See |
| |spell-wordlist-format|. Note that the regions as specified in the files in |
| 'spellfile' are only used when all entries in "spelllang" specify the same |
| region (not counting files specified by their .spl name). |
| |
| *spell-german* |
| Specific exception: For German these special regions are used: |
| de all German words accepted |
| de_de old and new spelling |
| de_19 old spelling |
| de_20 new spelling |
| de_at Austria |
| de_ch Switzerland |
| |
| *spell-yiddish* |
| Yiddish requires using "utf-8" encoding, because of the special characters |
| used. If you are using latin1 Vim will use transliterated (romanized) Yiddish |
| instead. If you want to use transliterated Yiddish with utf-8 use "yi-tr". |
| In a table: |
| 'encoding' 'spelllang' |
| utf-8 yi Yiddish |
| latin1 yi transliterated Yiddish |
| utf-8 yi-tr transliterated Yiddish |
| |
| |
| SPELL FILES *spell-load* |
| |
| Vim searches for spell files in the "spell" subdirectory of the directories in |
| 'runtimepath'. The name is: LL.EEE.spl, where: |
| LL the language name |
| EEE the value of 'encoding' |
| |
| The value for "LL" comes from 'spelllang', but excludes the region name. |
| Examples: |
| 'spelllang' LL ~ |
| en_us en |
| en-rare en-rare |
| medical_ca medical |
| |
| Only the first file is loaded, the one that is first in 'runtimepath'. If |
| this succeeds then additionally files with the name LL.EEE.add.spl are loaded. |
| All the ones that are found are used. |
| |
| Additionally, the files related to the names in 'spellfile' are loaded. These |
| are the files that |zg| and |zw| add good and wrong words to. |
| |
| Exceptions: |
| - Vim uses "latin1" when 'encoding' is "iso-8859-15". The euro sign doesn't |
| matter for spelling. |
| - When no spell file for 'encoding' is found "ascii" is tried. This only |
| works for languages where nearly all words are ASCII, such as English. It |
| helps when 'encoding' is not "latin1", such as iso-8859-2, and English text |
| is being edited. For the ".add" files the same name as the found main |
| spell file is used. |
| |
| For example, with these values: |
| 'runtimepath' is "~/.vim,/usr/share/vim70,~/.vim/after" |
| 'encoding' is "iso-8859-2" |
| 'spelllang' is "pl" |
| |
| Vim will look for: |
| 1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl |
| 2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl |
| 3. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl |
| 4. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl |
| 5. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl |
| |
| This assumes 1. is not found and 2. is found. |
| |
| If 'encoding' is "latin1" Vim will look for: |
| 1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.latin1.spl |
| 2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.latin1.spl |
| 3. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.latin1.spl |
| 4. ~/.vim/spell/pl.ascii.spl |
| 5. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.ascii.spl |
| 6. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.ascii.spl |
| |
| This assumes none of them are found (Polish doesn't make sense when leaving |
| out the non-ASCII characters). |
| |
| Spelling for EBCDIC is currently not supported. |
| |
| A spell file might not be available in the current 'encoding'. See |
| |spell-mkspell| about how to create a spell file. Converting a spell file |
| with "iconv" will NOT work! |
| |
| *E758* *E759* |
| When loading a spell file Vim checks that it is properly formatted. If you |
| get an error the file may be truncated, modified or intended for another Vim |
| version. |
| |
| |
| WORDS |
| |
| Vim uses a fixed method to recognize a word. This is independent of |
| 'iskeyword', so that it also works in help files and for languages that |
| include characters like '-' in 'iskeyword'. The word characters do depend on |
| 'encoding'. |
| |
| The table with word characters is stored in the main .spl file. Therefore it |
| matters what the current locale is when generating it! A .add.spl file does |
| not contain a word table though. |
| |
| A word that starts with a digit is always ignored. That includes hex numbers |
| in the form 0xff and 0XFF. |
| |
| |
| WORD COMBINATIONS |
| |
| It is possible to spell-check words that include a space. This is used to |
| recognize words that are invalid when used by themselves, e.g. for "et al.". |
| It can also be used to recognize "the the" and highlight it. |
| |
| The number of spaces is irrelevant. In most cases a line break may also |
| appear. However, this makes it difficult to find out where to start checking |
| for spelling mistakes. When you make a change to one line and only that line |
| is redrawn Vim won't look in the previous line, thus when "et" is at the end |
| of the previous line "al." will be flagged as an error. And when you type |
| "the<CR>the" the highlighting doesn't appear until the first line is redrawn. |
| Use |CTRL-L| to redraw right away. "[s" will also stop at a word combination |
| with a line break. |
| |
| When encountering a line break Vim skips characters such as '*', '>' and '"', |
| so that comments in C, shell and Vim code can be spell checked. |
| |
| |
| SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING *spell-syntax* |
| |
| Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be |
| done: |
| |
| 1. everywhere default |
| 2. in specific items use "contains=@Spell" |
| 3. everywhere but specific items use "contains=@NoSpell" |
| |
| For the second method adding the @NoSpell cluster will disable spell checking |
| again. This can be used, for example, to add @Spell to the comments of a |
| program, and add @NoSpell for items that shouldn't be checked. |
| |
| |
| VIM SCRIPTS |
| |
| If you want to write a Vim script that does something with spelling, you may |
| find these functions useful: |
| |
| spellbadword() find badly spelled word at the cursor |
| spellsuggest() get list of spelling suggestions |
| soundfold() get the sound-a-like version of a word |
| |
| |
| SETTING 'spellcapcheck' AUTOMATICALLY *set-spc-auto* |
| |
| After the 'spelllang' option has been set successfully, Vim will source the |
| files "spell/LANG.vim" in 'runtimepath'. "LANG" is the value of 'spelllang' |
| up to the first comma, dot or underscore. This can be used to set options |
| specifically for the language, especially 'spellcapcheck'. |
| |
| The distribution includes a few of these files. Use this command to see what |
| they do: > |
| :next $VIMRUNTIME/spell/*.vim |
| |
| Note that the default scripts don't set 'spellcapcheck' if it was changed from |
| the default value. This assumes the user prefers another value then. |
| |
| |
| DOUBLE SCORING *spell-double-scoring* |
| |
| The 'spellsuggest' option can be used to select "double" scoring. This |
| mechanism is based on the principle that there are two kinds of spelling |
| mistakes: |
| |
| 1. You know how to spell the word, but mistype something. This results in a |
| small editing distance (character swapped/omitted/inserted) and possibly a |
| word that sounds completely different. |
| |
| 2. You don't know how to spell the word and type something that sounds right. |
| The edit distance can be big but the word is similar after sound-folding. |
| |
| Since scores for these two mistakes will be very different we use a list |
| for each and mix them. |
| |
| The sound-folding is slow and people that know the language won't make the |
| second kind of mistakes. Therefore 'spellsuggest' can be set to select the |
| preferred method for scoring the suggestions. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| 3. Generating a spell file *spell-mkspell* |
| |
| Vim uses a binary file format for spelling. This greatly speeds up loading |
| the word list and keeps it small. |
| *.aff* *.dic* *Myspell* |
| You can create a Vim spell file from the .aff and .dic files that Myspell |
| uses. Myspell is used by OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. You should be able to |
| find them here: |
| http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/spell_dic.html |
| You can also use a plain word list. The results are the same, the choice |
| depends on what word lists you can find. |
| |
| If you install Aap (from www.a-a-p.org) you can use the recipes in the |
| runtime/spell/??/ directories. Aap will take care of downloading the files, |
| apply patches needed for Vim and build the .spl file. |
| |
| Make sure your current locale is set properly, otherwise Vim doesn't know what |
| characters are upper/lower case letters. If the locale isn't available (e.g., |
| when using an MS-Windows codepage on Unix) add tables to the .aff file |
| |spell-affix-chars|. If the .aff file doesn't define a table then the word |
| table of the currently active spelling is used. If spelling is not active |
| then Vim will try to guess. |
| |
| *:mksp* *:mkspell* |
| :mksp[ell][!] [-ascii] {outname} {inname} ... |
| Generate a Vim spell file word lists. Example: > |
| :mkspell /tmp/nl nl_NL.words |
| < *E751* |
| When {outname} ends in ".spl" it is used as the output |
| file name. Otherwise it should be a language name, |
| such as "en", without the region name. The file |
| written will be "{outname}.{encoding}.spl", where |
| {encoding} is the value of the 'encoding' option. |
| |
| When the output file already exists [!] must be used |
| to overwrite it. |
| |
| When the [-ascii] argument is present, words with |
| non-ascii characters are skipped. The resulting file |
| ends in "ascii.spl". |
| |
| The input can be the Myspell format files {inname}.aff |
| and {inname}.dic. If {inname}.aff does not exist then |
| {inname} is used as the file name of a plain word |
| list. |
| |
| Multiple {inname} arguments can be given to combine |
| regions into one Vim spell file. Example: > |
| :mkspell ~/.vim/spell/en /tmp/en_US /tmp/en_CA /tmp/en_AU |
| < This combines the English word lists for US, CA and AU |
| into one en.spl file. |
| Up to eight regions can be combined. *E754* *755* |
| The REP and SAL items of the first .aff file where |
| they appear are used. |spell-REP| |spell-SAL| |
| |
| This command uses a lot of memory, required to find |
| the optimal word tree (Polish, Italian and Hungarian |
| require several hundred Mbyte). The final result will |
| be much smaller, because compression is used. To |
| avoid running out of memory compression will be done |
| now and then. This can be tuned with the 'mkspellmem' |
| option. |
| |
| After the spell file was written and it was being used |
| in a buffer it will be reloaded automatically. |
| |
| :mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}.{enc}.add |
| Like ":mkspell" above, using {name}.{enc}.add as the |
| input file and producing an output file in the same |
| directory that has ".spl" appended. |
| |
| :mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name} |
| Like ":mkspell" above, using {name} as the input file |
| and producing an output file in the same directory |
| that has ".{enc}.spl" appended. |
| |
| Vim will report the number of duplicate words. This might be a mistake in the |
| list of words. But sometimes it is used to have different prefixes and |
| suffixes for the same basic word to avoid them combining (e.g. Czech uses |
| this). If you want Vim to report all duplicate words set the 'verbose' |
| option. |
| |
| Since you might want to change a Myspell word list for use with Vim the |
| following procedure is recommended: |
| |
| 1. Obtain the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files from Myspell. |
| 2. Make a copy of these files to xx_YY.orig.aff and xx_YY.orig.dic. |
| 3. Change the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files to remove bad words, add missing |
| words, define word characters with FOL/LOW/UPP, etc. The distributed |
| "src/spell/*.diff" files can be used. |
| 4. Start Vim with the right locale and use |:mkspell| to generate the Vim |
| spell file. |
| 5. Try out the spell file with ":set spell spelllang=xx" if you wrote it in |
| a spell directory in 'runtimepath', or ":set spelllang=xx.enc.spl" if you |
| wrote it somewhere else. |
| |
| When the Myspell files are updated you can merge the differences: |
| 1. Obtain the new Myspell files as xx_YY.new.aff and xx_UU.new.dic. |
| 2. Use Vimdiff to see what changed: > |
| vimdiff xx_YY.orig.dic xx_YY.new.dic |
| 3. Take over the changes you like in xx_YY.dic. |
| You may also need to change xx_YY.aff. |
| 4. Rename xx_YY.new.dic to xx_YY.orig.dic and xx_YY.new.aff to xx_YY.new.aff. |
| |
| |
| SPELL FILE VERSIONS *E770* *E771* *E772* |
| |
| Spell checking is a relatively new feature in Vim, thus it's possible that the |
| .spl file format will be changed to support more languages. Vim will check |
| the validity of the spell file and report anything wrong. |
| |
| E771: Old spell file, needs to be updated ~ |
| This spell file is older than your Vim. You need to update the .spl file. |
| |
| E772: Spell file is for newer version of Vim ~ |
| This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim. You need to |
| update Vim. |
| |
| E770: Unsupported section in spell file ~ |
| This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim and contains a |
| section that is required for the spell file to work. In this case it's |
| probably a good idea to upgrade your Vim. |
| |
| |
| SPELL FILE DUMP |
| |
| If for some reason you want to check what words are supported by the currently |
| used spelling files, use this command: |
| |
| *:spelldump* *:spelld* |
| :spelld[ump] Open a new window and fill it with all currently valid |
| words. Compound words are not included. |
| Note: For some languages the result may be enormous, |
| causing Vim to run out of memory. |
| |
| The format of the word list is used |spell-wordlist-format|. You should be |
| able to read it with ":mkspell" to generate one .spl file that includes all |
| the words. |
| |
| When all entries to 'spelllang' use the same regions or no regions at all then |
| the region information is included in the dumped words. Otherwise only words |
| for the current region are included and no "/regions" line is generated. |
| |
| Comment lines with the name of the .spl file are used as a header above the |
| words that were generated from that .spl file. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| 4. Spell file format *spell-file-format* |
| |
| This is the format of the files that are used by the person who creates and |
| maintains a word list. |
| |
| Note that we avoid the word "dictionary" here. That is because the goal of |
| spell checking differs from writing a dictionary (as in the book). For |
| spelling we need a list of words that are OK, thus should not to be |
| highlighted. Person and company names will not appear in a dictionary, but do |
| appear in a word list. And some old words are rarely used while they are |
| common misspellings. These do appear in a dictionary but not in a word list. |
| |
| There are two formats: A straight list of words and a list using affix |
| compression. The files with affix compression are used by Myspell (Mozilla |
| and OpenOffice.org). This requires two files, one with .aff and one with .dic |
| extension. |
| |
| |
| FORMAT OF STRAIGHT WORD LIST *spell-wordlist-format* |
| |
| The words must appear one per line. That is all that is required. |
| |
| Additionally the following items are recognized: |
| |
| - Empty and blank lines are ignored. |
| |
| - Lines starting with a # are ignored (comment lines). |
| |
| - A line starting with "/encoding=", before any word, specifies the encoding |
| of the file. After the second '=' comes an encoding name. This tells Vim |
| to setup conversion from the specified encoding to 'encoding'. Thus you can |
| use one word list for several target encodings. |
| |
| - A line starting with "/regions=" specifies the region names that are |
| supported. Each region name must be two ASCII letters. The first one is |
| region 1. Thus "/regions=usca" has region 1 "us" and region 2 "ca". |
| In an addition word list the region names should be equal to the main word |
| list! |
| |
| - Other lines starting with '/' are reserved for future use. The ones that |
| are not recognized are ignored (but you do get a warning message). |
| |
| - A "/" may follow the word with the following items: |
| = Case must match exactly. |
| ? Rare word. |
| ! Bad (wrong) word. |
| digit A region in which the word is valid. If no regions are |
| specified the word is valid in all regions. |
| |
| Example: |
| |
| # This is an example word list comment |
| /encoding=latin1 encoding of the file |
| /regions=uscagb regions "us", "ca" and "gb" |
| example word for all regions |
| blah/12 word for regions "us" and "ca" |
| vim/! bad word |
| Campbell/?3 rare word in region 3 "gb" |
| 's mornings/= keep-case word |
| |
| Note that when "/=" is used the same word with all upper-case letters is not |
| accepted. This is different from a word with mixed case that is automatically |
| marked as keep-case, those words may appear in all upper-case letters. |
| |
| |
| FORMAT WITH AFFIX COMPRESSION |
| |
| There are two files: the basic word list and an affix file. The affixes are |
| used to modify the basic words to get the full word list. This significantly |
| reduces the number of words, especially for a language like Polish. This is |
| called affix compression. |
| |
| The basic word list and the affix file are combined and turned into a binary |
| spell file. All the preprocessing has been done, thus this file loads fast. |
| The binary spell file format is described in the source code (src/spell.c). |
| But only developers need to know about it. |
| |
| The preprocessing also allows us to take the Myspell language files and modify |
| them before the Vim word list is made. The tools for this can be found in the |
| "src/spell" directory. |
| |
| The format for the affix and word list files is based on what Myspell uses |
| (the spell checker of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org). A description can be found |
| here: |
| http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/affix.readme ~ |
| Note that affixes are case sensitive, this isn't obvious from the description. |
| |
| Vim does not use the TRY item, it is ignored. For making suggestions the |
| possible characters in the words are used. |
| |
| Vim supports quite a few extras. They are described below |spell-affix-vim|. |
| Attempts have been made to keep this compatible with other spell checkers, so |
| that the same files can be used. |
| |
| |
| WORD LIST FORMAT *spell-dic-format* |
| |
| A very short example, with line numbers: |
| |
| 1 1234 |
| 2 aan |
| 3 Als |
| 4 Etten-Leur |
| 5 et al. |
| 6 's-Gravenhage |
| 7 's-Gravenhaags |
| 8 bedel/P |
| 9 kado/1 |
| 10 cadeau/2 |
| 11 TCP,IP |
| |
| The first line contains the number of words. Vim ignores it, but you do get |
| an error message if it's not there. *E760* |
| |
| What follows is one word per line. There should be no white space before or |
| after the word. After the word there is an optional slash and flags. Most of |
| these flags are letters that indicate the affixes that can be used with this |
| word. These are specified with SFX and PFX lines in the .aff file. See the |
| Myspell documentation. Vim allows using other flag types with the FLAG item |
| in the affix file |spell-FLAG|. |
| |
| When the word only has lower-case letters it will also match with the word |
| starting with an upper-case letter. |
| |
| When the word includes an upper-case letter, this means the upper-case letter |
| is required at this position. The same word with a lower-case letter at this |
| position will not match. When some of the other letters are upper-case it will |
| not match either. |
| |
| The word with all upper-case characters will always be OK. |
| |
| word list matches does not match ~ |
| als als Als ALS ALs AlS aLs aLS |
| Als Als ALS als ALs AlS aLs aLS |
| ALS ALS als Als ALs AlS aLs aLS |
| AlS AlS ALS als Als ALs aLs aLS |
| |
| The KEP affix ID can be used to specifically match a word with identical case |
| only, see below |spell-KEP|. |
| |
| Note in line 5 to 7 that non-word characters are used. You can include |
| any character in a word. When checking the text a word still only matches |
| when it appears with a non-word character before and after it. For Myspell a |
| word starting with a non-word character probably won't work. |
| |
| In line 12 the word "TCP/IP" is defined. Since the slash has a special |
| meaning the comma is used instead. This is defined with the SLASH item in the |
| affix file, see |spell-SLASH|. Note that without this SLASH item the |
| word will be "TCP,IP". |
| |
| *spell-affix-vim* |
| A flag that Vim adds and is not in Myspell is the flag defined with KEP in the |
| affix file. This has the meaning that case matters. This can be used if the |
| word does not have the first letter in upper case at the start of a sentence. |
| Example (assuming that = was used for KEP): |
| |
| word list matches does not match ~ |
| 's morgens/= 's morgens 'S morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS |
| 's Morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS 'S morgens 's morgens |
| |
| The flag can also be used to avoid that the word matches when it is in all |
| upper-case letters. |
| |
| *spell-affix-mbyte* |
| The basic word list is normally in an 8-bit encoding, which is mentioned in |
| the affix file. The affix file must always be in the same encoding as the |
| word list. This is compatible with Myspell. For Vim the encoding may also be |
| something else, any encoding that "iconv" supports. The "SET" line must |
| specify the name of the encoding. When using a multi-byte encoding it's |
| possible to use more different affixes (but Myspell doesn't support that, thus |
| you may not want to use it anyway). |
| |
| |
| CHARACTER TABLES |
| *spell-affix-chars* |
| When using an 8-bit encoding the affix file should define what characters are |
| word characters (as specified with ENC). This is because the system where |
| ":mkspell" is used may not support a locale with this encoding and isalpha() |
| won't work. For example when using "cp1250" on Unix. |
| |
| *E761* *E762* *spell-FOL* |
| *spell-LOW* *spell-UPP* |
| Three lines in the affix file are needed. Simplistic example: |
| |
| FOL áëñ ~ |
| LOW áëñ ~ |
| UPP ÁËÑ ~ |
| |
| All three lines must have exactly the same number of characters. |
| |
| The "FOL" line specifies the case-folded characters. These are used to |
| compare words while ignoring case. For most encodings this is identical to |
| the lower case line. |
| |
| The "LOW" line specifies the characters in lower-case. Mostly it's equal to |
| the "FOL" line. |
| |
| The "UPP" line specifies the characters with upper-case. That is, a character |
| is upper-case where it's different from the character at the same position in |
| "FOL". |
| |
| An exception is made for the German sharp s ß. The upper-case version is |
| "SS". In the FOL/LOW/UPP lines it should be included, so that it's recognized |
| as a word character, but use the ß character in all three. |
| |
| ASCII characters should be omitted, Vim always handles these in the same way. |
| When the encoding is UTF-8 no word characters need to be specified. |
| |
| *E763* |
| Vim allows you to use spell checking for several languages in the same file. |
| You can list them in the 'spelllang' option. As a consequence all spell files |
| for the same encoding must use the same word characters, otherwise they can't |
| be combined without errors. If you get a warning that the word tables differ |
| you may need to generate the .spl file again with |:mkspell|. Check the FOL, |
| LOW and UPP lines in the used .aff file. |
| |
| The XX.ascii.spl spell file generated with the "-ascii" argument will not |
| contain the table with characters, so that it can be combine with spell files |
| for any encoding. The .add.spl files also do not contain the table. |
| |
| |
| MID-WORD CHARACTERS |
| *spell-midword* |
| Some characters are only to be considered word characters if they are used in |
| between two ordinary word characters. An example is the single quote: It is |
| often used to put text in quotes, thus it can't be recognized as a word |
| character, but when it appears in between word characters it must be part of |
| the word. This is needed to detect a spelling error such as they'are. That |
| should be they're, but since "they" and "are" are words themselves that would |
| go unnoticed. |
| |
| These characters are defined with MIDWORD in the .aff file: |
| |
| MIDWORD '- ~ |
| |
| |
| FLAG TYPES *spell-FLAG* |
| |
| Flags are used to specify the affixes that can be used with a word and for |
| other properties of the word. Normally single-character flags are used. This |
| limits the number of possible flags, especially for 8-bit encodings. The FLAG |
| item can be used if more affixes are to be used. Possible values: |
| |
| FLAG long use two-character flags |
| FLAG num use numbers, from 1 up to 65000 |
| FLAG caplong use one-character flags without A-Z and two-character |
| flags that start with A-Z |
| |
| With "FLAG num" the numbers in a list of affixes need to be separated with a |
| comma: "234,2143,1435". This method is inefficient, but useful if the file is |
| generated with a program. |
| |
| When using "caplong" the two-character flags all start with a capital: "Aa", |
| "B1", "BB", etc. This is useful to use one-character flags for the most |
| common items and two-character flags for uncommon items. |
| |
| Note: When using utf-8 only characters up to 65000 may be used for flags. |
| |
| |
| AFFIXES |
| *spell-PFX* *spell-SFX* |
| The usual PFX (prefix) and SFX (suffix) lines are supported (see the Myspell |
| documentation or the Aspell manual: |
| http://aspell.net/man-html/Affix-Compression.html). |
| |
| Note that Myspell ignores any extra text after the relevant info. Vim |
| requires this text to start with a "#" so that mistakes don't go unnoticed. |
| Example: |
| |
| SFX F 0 in [^i]n # Spion > Spionin ~ |
| SFX F 0 nen in # Bauerin > Bauerinnen ~ |
| |
| Apparently Myspell allows an affix name to appear more than once. Since this |
| might also be a mistake, Vim checks for an extra "S". The affix files for |
| Myspell that use this feature apparently have this flag. Example: |
| |
| SFX a Y 1 S ~ |
| SFX a 0 an . ~ |
| |
| SFX a Y 2 S ~ |
| SFX a 0 en . ~ |
| SFX a 0 on . ~ |
| |
| *spell-affix-rare* |
| An extra item for Vim is the "rare" flag. It must come after the other |
| fields, before a comment. When used then all words that use the affix will be |
| marked as rare words. Example: |
| |
| PFX F 0 nene . rare ~ |
| SFX F 0 oin n rare # hardly ever used ~ |
| |
| However, if the word also appears as a good word in another way it won't be |
| marked as rare. |
| |
| *spell-affix-nocomp* |
| Another extra item for Vim is the "nocomp" flag. It must come after the other |
| fields, before a comment. It can be either before or after "rare". When |
| present then all words that use the affix will not be part of a compound word. |
| Example: |
| affix file: |
| COMPOUNDFLAG c ~ |
| SFX a Y 2 ~ |
| SFX a 0 s . ~ |
| SFX a 0 ize . nocomp ~ |
| dictionary: |
| word/c ~ |
| util/ac ~ |
| |
| This allows for "wordutil" and "wordutils" but not "wordutilize". |
| |
| *spell-PFXPOSTPONE* |
| When an affix file has very many prefixes that apply to many words it's not |
| possible to build the whole word list in memory. This applies to Hebrew (a |
| list with all words is over a Gbyte). In that case applying prefixes must be |
| postponed. This makes spell checking slower. It is indicated by this keyword |
| in the .aff file: |
| |
| PFXPOSTPONE ~ |
| |
| Only prefixes without a chop string can be postponed, prefixes with a chop |
| string will still be included in the word list. An exception if the chop |
| string is one character and equal to the last character of the added string, |
| but in lower case. Thus when the chop string is used to allow the following |
| word to start with an upper case letter. |
| |
| |
| WORDS WITH A SLASH *spell-SLASH* |
| |
| The slash is used in the .dic file to separate the basic word from the affix |
| letters that can be used. Unfortunately, this means you cannot use a slash in |
| a word. Thus "TCP/IP" cannot be a word. To work around that you can define a |
| replacement character for the slash. Example: |
| |
| SLASH , ~ |
| |
| Now you can use "TCP,IP" to add the word "TCP/IP". |
| |
| Of course, the letter used should itself not appear in any word! The letter |
| must be ASCII, thus a single byte. |
| |
| |
| KEEP-CASE WORDS *spell-KEP* |
| |
| In the affix file a KEP line can be used to define the affix name used for |
| keep-case words. Example: |
| |
| KEP = ~ |
| |
| See above for an example |spell-affix-vim|. |
| |
| |
| RARE WORDS *spell-RAR* |
| |
| In the affix file a RAR line can be used to define the affix name used for |
| rare words. Example: |
| |
| RAR ? ~ |
| |
| Rare words are highlighted differently from bad words. This is to be used for |
| words that are correct for the language, but are hardly ever used and could be |
| a typing mistake anyway. When the same word is found as good it won't be |
| highlighted as rare. |
| |
| |
| BAD WORDS *spell-BAD* |
| |
| In the affix file a BAD line can be used to define the affix name used for |
| bad words. Example: |
| |
| BAD ! ~ |
| |
| This can be used to exclude words that would otherwise be good. For example |
| "the the" in the .dic file: |
| |
| the the/! ~ |
| |
| Once a word has been marked as bad it won't be undone by encountering the same |
| word as good. |
| |
| *spell-NEEDAFFIX* |
| The NEEDAFFIX flag is used to require that a word is used with an affix. The |
| word itself is not a good word. Example: |
| |
| NEEDAFFIX + ~ |
| |
| *spell-NEEDCOMPOUND* |
| The NEEDCOMPOUND flag is used to require that a word is used as part of a |
| compound word The word itself is not a good word. Example: |
| |
| NEEDCOMPOUND & ~ |
| |
| |
| COMPOUND WORDS *spell-compound* |
| |
| A compound word is a longer word made by concatenating words that appear in |
| the .dic file. To specify which words may be concatenated a character is |
| used. This character is put in the list of affixes after the word. We will |
| call this character a flag here. Obviously these flags must be different from |
| any affix IDs used. |
| |
| *spell-COMPOUNDFLAG* |
| The Myspell compatible method uses one flag, specified with COMPOUNDFLAG. |
| All words with this flag combine in any order. This means there is no control |
| over which word comes first. Example: |
| COMPOUNDFLAG c ~ |
| |
| *spell-COMPOUNDFLAGS* |
| A more advanced method to specify how compound words can be formed uses |
| multiple items with multiple flags. This is not compatible with Myspell 3.0. |
| Let's start with an example: |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS c+ ~ |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS se ~ |
| |
| The first line defines that words with the "c" flag can be concatenated in any |
| order. The second line defines compound words that are made of one word with |
| the "s" flag and one word with the "e" flag. With this dictionary: |
| bork/c ~ |
| onion/s ~ |
| soup/e ~ |
| |
| You can make these words: |
| bork |
| borkbork |
| borkborkbork |
| (etc.) |
| onion |
| soup |
| onionsoup |
| |
| The COMPOUNDFLAGS item may appear multiple times. The argument is made out of |
| one or more groups, where each group can be: |
| one flag e.g., c |
| alternate flags inside [] e.g., [abc] |
| Optionally this may be followed by: |
| * the group appears zero or more times, e.g., sm*e |
| + the group appears one or more times, e.g., c+ |
| |
| This is similar to the regexp pattern syntax (but not the same!). A few |
| examples with the sequence of word flags they require: |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS x+ x xx xxx etc. |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS yz yz |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS x+z xz xxz xxxz etc. |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS yx+ yx yxx yxxx etc. |
| |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS [abc]z az bz cz |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS [abc]+z az aaz abaz bz baz bcbz cz caz cbaz etc. |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS a[xyz]+ ax axx axyz ay ayx ayzz az azy azxy etc. |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS sm*e se sme smme smmme etc. |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS s[xyz]*e se sxe sxye sxyxe sye syze sze szye szyxe etc. |
| |
| A specific example: Allow a compound to be made of two words and a dash: |
| In the .aff file: |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS sde ~ |
| NEEDAFFIX x ~ |
| COMPOUNDMAX 3 ~ |
| COMPOUNDMIN 1 ~ |
| In the .dic file: |
| start/s ~ |
| end/e ~ |
| -/xd ~ |
| |
| This allows for the word "start-end", but not "startend". |
| |
| *spell-COMPOUNDMIN* |
| The minimal character length of a word used for compounding is specified with |
| COMPOUNDMIN. Example: |
| COMPOUNDMIN 5 ~ |
| |
| When omitted there is no minimal length. Obviously you could just leave out |
| the compound flag from short words instead, this feature is present for |
| compatibility with Myspell. |
| |
| *spell-COMPOUNDMAX* |
| The maximum number of words that can be concatenated into a compound word is |
| specified with COMPOUNDMAX. Example: |
| COMPOUNDMAX 3 ~ |
| |
| When omitted there is no maximum. It applies to all compound words. |
| |
| To set a limit for words with specific flags make sure the items in |
| COMPOUNDFLAGS where they appear don't allow too many words. |
| |
| *spell-COMPOUNDSYLMAX* |
| The maximum number of syllables that a compound word may contain is specified |
| with COMPOUNDSYLMAX. Example: |
| COMPOUNDSYLMAX 6 ~ |
| |
| This has no effect if there is no SYLLABLE item. Without COMPOUNDSYLMAX there |
| is no limit on the number of syllables. |
| |
| If both COMPOUNDMAX and COMPOUNDSYLMAX are defined, a compound word is |
| accepted if it fits one of the criteria, thus is either made from up to |
| COMPOUNDMAX words or contains up to COMPOUNDSYLMAX syllables. |
| |
| *spell-SYLLABLE* |
| The SYLLABLE item defines characters or character sequences that are used to |
| count the number of syllables in a word. Example: |
| SYLLABLE aáeéiíoóöõuúüûy/aa/au/ea/ee/ei/ie/oa/oe/oo/ou/uu/ui ~ |
| |
| Before the first slash is the set of characters that are counted for one |
| syllable, also when repeated and mixed, until the next character that is not |
| in this set. After the slash come sequences of characters that are counted |
| for one syllable. These are preferred over using characters from the set. |
| With the example "ideeen" has three syllables, counted by "i", "ee" and "e". |
| |
| Only case-folded letters need to be included. |
| |
| Above another way to restrict compounding was mentioned above: adding "nocomp" |
| after an affix causes all words that are made with that affix not be be used |
| for compounding. |spell-affix-nocomp| |
| |
| |
| UNLIMITED COMPOUNDING *spell-NOBREAK* |
| |
| For some languages, such as Thai, there is no space in between words. This |
| looks like all words are compounded. To specify this use the NOBREAK item in |
| the affix file, without arguments: |
| NOBREAK ~ |
| |
| Vim will try to figure out where one word ends and a next starts. When there |
| are spelling mistakes this may not be quite right. |
| |
| >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< |
| NOTE: The following has not been implemented yet, because there are no word |
| lists that support this. |
| > *spell-CMP* |
| > Sometimes it is necessary to change a word when concatenating it to another, |
| > by removing a few letters, inserting something or both. It can also be useful |
| > to restrict concatenation to words that match a pattern. For this purpose CMP |
| > items can be used. They look like this: |
| > CMP {flag} {flags} {strip} {strip2} {add} {cond} {cond2} |
| > |
| > {flag} the flag, as used in COMPOUNDFLAGS for the lead word |
| > {flags} accepted flags for the following word ('.' to accept |
| > all) |
| > {strip} text to remove from the end of the lead word (zero |
| > for no stripping) |
| > {strip2} text to remove from the start of the following word |
| > (zero for no stripping) |
| > {add} text to insert between the words (zero for no |
| > addition) |
| > {cond} condition to match at the end of the lead word |
| > {cond2} condition to match at the start of the following word |
| > |
| > This is the same as what is used for SFX and PFX items, with the extra {flags} |
| > and {cond2} fields. Example: |
| > CMP f mrt 0 - . . ~ |
| > |
| > When used with the food and dish word list above, this means that a dash is |
| > inserted after each food item. Thus you get "onion-soup" and |
| > "onion-tomato-salat". |
| > |
| > When there are CMP items for a compound flag the concatenation is only done |
| > when a CMP item matches. |
| > |
| > When there are no CMP items for a compound flag, then all words will be |
| > concatenated, as if there was an item: |
| > CMP {flag} . 0 0 . . |
| > |
| >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< |
| |
| |
| REPLACEMENTS *spell-REP* |
| |
| In the affix file REP items can be used to define common mistakes. This is |
| used to make spelling suggestions. The items define the "from" text and the |
| "to" replacement. Example: |
| |
| REP 4 ~ |
| REP f ph ~ |
| REP ph f ~ |
| REP k ch ~ |
| REP ch k ~ |
| |
| The first line specifies the number of REP lines following. Vim ignores the |
| number, but it must be there. |
| |
| Don't include simple one-character replacements or swaps. Vim will try these |
| anyway. You can include whole words if you want to, but you might want to use |
| the "file:" item in 'spellsuggest' instead. |
| |
| |
| SIMILAR CHARACTERS *spell-MAP* |
| |
| In the affix file MAP items can be used to define letters that are very much |
| alike. This is mostly used for a letter with different accents. This is used |
| to prefer suggestions with these letters substituted. Example: |
| |
| MAP 2 ~ |
| MAP eéëêè ~ |
| MAP uüùúû ~ |
| |
| The first line specifies the number of MAP lines following. Vim ignores the |
| number, but the line must be there. |
| |
| Each letter must appear in only one of the MAP items. It's a bit more |
| efficient if the first letter is ASCII or at least one without accents. |
| |
| |
| SOUND-A-LIKE *spell-SAL* |
| |
| In the affix file SAL items can be used to define the sounds-a-like mechanism |
| to be used. The main items define the "from" text and the "to" replacement. |
| Simplistic example: |
| |
| SAL CIA X ~ |
| SAL CH X ~ |
| SAL C K ~ |
| SAL K K ~ |
| |
| There are a few rules and this can become quite complicated. An explanation |
| how it works can be found in the Aspell manual: |
| http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-Code.html. |
| |
| There are a few special items: |
| |
| SAL followup true ~ |
| SAL collapse_result true ~ |
| SAL remove_accents true ~ |
| |
| "1" has the same meaning as "true". Any other value means "false". |
| |
| |
| SIMPLE SOUNDFOLDING *spell-SOFOFROM* *spell-SOFOTO* |
| |
| The SAL mechanism is complex and slow. A simpler mechanism is mapping all |
| characters to another character, mapping similar sounding characters to the |
| same character. At the same time this does case folding. You can not have |
| both SAL items and simple soundfolding. |
| |
| There are two items required: one to specify the characters that are mapped |
| and one that specifies the characters they are mapped to. They must have |
| exactly the same number of characters. Example: |
| |
| SOFOFROM abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ~ |
| SOFOTO ebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkesebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkes ~ |
| |
| In the example all vowels are mapped to the same character 'e'. Another |
| method would be to leave out all vowels. Some characters that sound nearly |
| the same and are often mixed up, such as 'm' and 'n', are mapped to the same |
| character. Don't do this too much, all words will start looking alike. |
| |
| Characters that do not appear in SOFOFROM will be left out, except that all |
| white space is replaced by one space. Sequences of the same character in |
| SOFOFROM are replaced by one. |
| |
| You can use the |soundfold()| function to try out the results. Or set the |
| 'verbose' option to see the score in the output of the |z?| command. |
| |
| |
| vim:tw=78:sw=4:ts=8:ft=help:norl: |