[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Doug McIlroy]

        `quotes'
> rules used ...  to create British spelling from an American
> English database often leave a lot to be desired.

Among the BUGS listed for spell(1) in v7 was "Britsh spelling was
done by an American".

Nevertheless, at least one British expat thanked me for spell -b.
He had been using the original "spell", and ignoring its reports
of British "misspellings". But, he said, long exposure to American
writing had infected his writing. Spell -b was a blessing, for
revealed where his usage wobbled between traditions.

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Doug McIlroy wrote:

> Among the BUGS listed for spell(1) in v7 was "Britsh spelling was done 
> by an American".

Also in V6, I think.

> Nevertheless, at least one British expat thanked me for spell -b. He had 
> been using the original "spell", and ignoring its reports of British 
> "misspellings". But, he said, long exposure to American writing had 
> infected his writing. Spell -b was a blessing, for revealed where his 
> usage wobbled between traditions.

Tnen consider yourself thanked again!  As a Britisher, I get annoyed with 
the slow influx of American spelling and grammar here in Australia.

I now use "aspell" with what claims to be a British dictionary, but I'm 
still forever correcting it.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Dave,

> I now use "aspell" with what claims to be a British dictionary, but
> I'm still forever correcting it.

I use that too;  it picks up GB from one's locale.

    $ aspell config | grep _
    # default: <language-tag> = en_GB
    # default: <lang> = en_GB
    # default: .aspell.<lang>.pws = .aspell.en_GB.pws
    # default: .aspell.<lang>.prepl = .aspell.en_GB.prepl
    $

In the past, I've fed corrections back to aspell's author as bug
reports, typically with a link to
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/panelling and they get into
a new release every now and again.  He's moved to github, I see.
https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> I use that too;  it picks up GB from one's locale.
>
>    $ aspell config | grep _
>    # default: <language-tag> = en_GB
>    # default: <lang> = en_GB
>    # default: .aspell.<lang>.pws = .aspell.en_GB.pws
>    # default: .aspell.<lang>.prepl = .aspell.en_GB.prepl
>    $

Hmmm...  I seem to be using en_US (I thought I'd set it to en_AU or 
something); thanks.

> In the past, I've fed corrections back to aspell's author as bug 
> reports, typically with a link to 
> https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/panelling and they get into 
> a new release every now and again.  He's moved to github, I see. 
> https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell

Thanks for that.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Will Senn]

On 11/21/17 3:48 PM, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> In the past, I've fed corrections back to aspell's author as bug
> reports, typically with a link to
> https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/panelling and they get into
> a new release every now and again.  He's moved to github, I see.
> https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell
>
On a historical note, I am curious if anyone on the list remembers much 
about the development of the first spell checkers in Unix? Good 'ol 
remarkably accurate wikipedia suggests that it is descended from SAIL's 
DEC PDP-10 version. Who wrote the first standalone tool for unix and did 
they, as the wikip article says, base it on the DEC PDP-10 version 
(surely it would have been c, not assembly)? I see the man page for it 
in v6, but no executable. Just curious.

Will

-- 
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462  7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 6:43 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

> ​
> I see the man page for it in v6, but no executable. Just curious.


​There was certainly a spell by v6 in 77 timeframe, I relied on it and
remember adding words to it because the dictionary was small.  There was
also very slick side program called 'grope' that I was told was developed
using the spelling algorithms for the Bell Telephone 411 operators that one
of the OYOC folks brought with them [Karn maybe - I've forgotten whom].
 It had a different dictionary - that was its only disadvantage - so you
had to have two dictionaries on the system [grope split the words into 26
files and the indexed them in a interesting fashion].   But being someone
that can not spell to save myself, grope was a life wonderful addition to
my tool kit.
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[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Will Senn wrote:

> On a historical note, I am curious if anyone on the list remembers much 
> about the development of the first spell checkers in Unix? Good 'ol 
> remarkably accurate wikipedia suggests that it is descended from SAIL's 
> DEC PDP-10 version. Who wrote the first standalone tool for unix and did 
> they, as the wikip article says, base it on the DEC PDP-10 version 
> (surely it would have been c, not assembly)? I see the man page for it 
> in v6, but no executable.

There was a shell script that split the words on white space and sorted 
them by occurrence; the least-used ones were most likely spelling misteaks 
(unless you were a consistent mis-speller, which regretfully some people 
are).

No idea where I heard about it...  Was it "Programming Pearls"?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Spell - was tmac: Move macro diagnostics away from

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Will Senn

    > I see the man page for it in v6, but no executable.

The MIT V6+ system had it. They probably took it out of the distro because it
was useless without the dictionary, which they didn't have the rights to
distribute. Here's the source:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/spell.c
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/spell1.c
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/spell2.c
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/spell3.c

	Noel