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Help Needed To Maintain Aspell's Many Dictionaries for GNU Aspell

Category: Support Manager
Submitter: kevina
Date: Mon 20 Nov 2006 04:58:54 PM UTC
Status: Deleted

This software is part of the GNU Project.

GNU Aspell is a spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language. Unlike Ispell, Aspell can also easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special dictionary. Aspell will also do its best to respect the current locale setting. Other advantages over Ispell include support for using multiple dictionaries at once and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one Aspell process is open at once.

License GNU Lesser General Public License


Development Status
: 4 - Beta

Details (job description, contact ...):

Aspell currently has official dictionaries for over 80 languages which must all be kept up to date.  In the future, I hope to be able to support even more languages. Unfortunately I have very little free time to spend on keeping the dictionaries up to date.  In addtion, I have been horrible at getting back to dictionary authors when they express an interest in uploading a new dictionary.

Thus I desperately need help to maintain Aspell's many dictionaries. I am looking for a few people to help me with this. No real programming skills are required but you should be comfortable using the command line and building software.  You should be proficient in the English language (at least written English) since you will likely be working with people who may not have a masterly of the English language.

Tasks include:

1) Handle requests from dictionary authors who wish to create a new dictionary package. This may be as simple as checking over their package and then uploading it or it may be more involved.  In some cases all the author has is a word list and you will need to work with them to create a Aspell dictionary package.

2) Periodically check for new upstream versions of Aspell's 80+ dictionaries and update the official Aspell dictionary when appropriate.

3) Be on the lookout for potential new Aspell dictionaries.  Sources for potential new Aspell dictionaries include dictionaries available for other applications such as OpenOffice, and unofficial Aspell ones.  When new ones are found make contact with the author and work with them to create an official Aspell dictionary.

4) When an upstream dictionary hasn't been maintained for a while and there is a newer dictionary by a different author for the same language, then consider using that one instead.  However, if at all possible you should get the consent of the original author of the existing version.

5) Other misc. dictionary related tasks.



Without some additional help I'm afraid that the official Aspell dictionaries may become so out of date that no one will use them.

Thanks in advance.
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