[aspell-devel] listing available dicts

[Melvin Hadasht]

Hi,

I'm trying to find a solution to the following problem with the new aspell.
Maybe I missed something in new aspell, but I could not find a simple solution.

The problem is in short: how to get a list of available dictionaries and from
that list configure aspell to use one of them:

The application need to provide the user with a list of available dictionaries.
With old pspell, it was straightforward: just list all *.pwli files in the
$(prefix)/share/pspell. The file names has the format
LANG-SPELLING-JARGON-MODULE.pwli. By parsing them and listing them, the user had
full control what dictionary and module he could use (aspell or ispell). 

Now, with the new aspell, the dictionaries file names are not easy to parse:
there is no easy rule on how to get the dictionary name to pass to
aspell_config_replace() knowing the file name. For example, there are
english.multi, american.multi, en_GB.multi, en_GB-only.multi etc. The
LANG-SPELLING-JARGON-MODULE quadruplet needed to set aspell is not easily found.
The application needs at least to open and read maybe several *.multi files to
get the L-S-J-M quadruplet. May I suggest to switch back to the *.pwli file
format? Or to provide something alike? (*.awli). 

I tested the new API (aspell_dict_info), but it does not help, as it lists the
directory and just parses the file names, moreover, it needs an already existing
AspellConfig. 

I would suggest to have the same filename pattern as in pspell, or to make add
an option to aspell_config_replace(config, "dict-file", filename)? 

Or maybe I'm missing some obvious point?

Thanks.

-- 
Melvin Hadasht