Re: Spellcheck against multiple dictionaries?

[martin rudalics]

> I've downloaded speck.el file, but I'm not sure how do I use it.
>
> I've created a test file containing mixed correct and incorrect words,
> in Russian and English:
>
> Test тест correct очепятка incorect верно
>
> Then I've done M-x speck-mode. Emacs said that Speck-mode has been
> activated and is using ru_RU dictionary, but nothing has changed in
> the test buffer. From your description I was expecting that the
> incorrect words would be highlighted somehow. Am I missing something?

I don't have a Russian spell-checking engine installed so I can't
comment your example directly.  Suppose I have a file with the line

Test Test correct Duckfehler incorect richtig

Doing M-x speck-mode here starts an Aspell process checking with my
default language which is English, flagging the last three words as
incorrect.  I can now set the region around the word "Duckfehler" and
type C-2 C-? to set the speck language text property of that word to
German, which will still flag the word as incorrect but now with the
appropriate German suggestions how to correct it.

> I think that the ispell-ish behavior would indeed be nice. I've looked
> through the ispell code, and it looks like Emacs raises some kind of
> exception if the ispell process returns "invalid" status. Do you think
> it is possible to fallback to another dictionary on such an event?

With my Aspell engine I can write (and bind) a trivial command like

(defun ispell-check-word (arg)
  (interactive "p")
  (if (= arg 2)
      (ispell-change-dictionary "de_DE")
    (ispell-change-dictionary "en_US"))
  (ispell-word))

here and probably get what you want.  Note, however, that each time you
change the language with this command, Emacs kills an old and spawns a
new process of the Aspell engine.

Changing `ispell-word' as you say seems hardly possible because in
general there's no way to distinguish a word written incorrectly in
language A from a word written correctly in language B.  For the special
English/Russian case you could probably investigate the character
properties at `point' and spark the appropriate word-checking process.

martin