[aspell-announce] GNU Aspell 0.50 is now Available

[Kevin Atkinson]

GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source 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 much
better job of coming up with possible suggestions than just about any
other spell checker out there for the English language, including
Ispell and Microsoft Word. It also has many other technical
enhancements over Ispell such as using shared memory for dictionaries
and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one
Aspell process is open at once.  The ultimate goal of GNU Aspell is to
become the standard spell checker for GNU/Linux and other Free
operating systems.

This release of Aspell is the first version of Aspell as an official
GNU Package.  It is a combination of the original Aspell and Pspell
which should be as least as stable as the original Aspell/Pspell
combination.  The source code has been completely reorganized in the
process of the merge which should make it significantly easier for
others to maintain.  Being a single package, it should also be easier
to install and package.

>From an end-users stand point GNU Aspell has several small yet
significant enhancements over the original Aspell including an
improved spell checking interface which includes the ability to use
Ispell key bindings when checking documents, support for the Dvorak
keyboard layout, and an enhanced command line interface which includes
support for listing the available dictionaries and printing out the
value of an individual configuration option.

Unfortunately, Kevin Atkinson, the sole maintainer of GNU Aspell has
very little time to maintain and develop future versions of Aspell.
Thus, he is desperately looking for someone to help with the maintenance
and development of Aspell.  A lot of tasks need to be done before
Kevin will consider Aspell complete, but without some outside help GNU
Aspell will probably never make it.

More information on GNU Aspell, including how to get it and ways
others can help, can be found at http://aspell.net.

-- 
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org