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Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest
From: |
R. Diez |
Subject: |
Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest |
Date: |
Thu, 12 Jul 2018 14:59:01 +0000 (UTC) |
Hi there:
I have been trying to use Flyspell, and I found it difficult to configure.
You have to search the Internet in order to find good tips. After some time, I
found this page, which summarises Flyspell's shortcomings:
http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_spell_checker_problems.html
Flyspell's documentation is made of a few source-code comments, and this page:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Spelling.html
If the documentation were honest, it would mention those shortcomings itself,
maybe as part of a CAVEATS section. Otherwise, you are lead to believe that
Flyspell is fine and dandy, which clearly is not the case. After all, we are
all used to 'proper' spell checkers all around us (for example, in LibreOffice).
I am using Emacs 26.1. The source code comments are outdated. For example:
;; Some user variables control the behavior of flyspell. They are
;; those defined under the `User variables' comment.
However, I found no "user variables" comment anywhere on that file.
Furthermore, this comment does not mention anything about literal strings being
checked too (more on that further below):
;; To enable Flyspell in text representing computer programs, type
;; M-x flyspell-prog-mode.
;; In that mode only text inside comments is checked.
The first big gotcha was trying to set up automatic language detection, which
should arguably be part of Flyspell. I would say that a sizeable part of the
population has to handle languages other than English everyday. Who wants to
manually switch dictionaries every time? After some struggling, I found and
configured another package to achieve that.
I have a big text file with all my assorted notes (I haven't learnt Org Mode
yet). I cannot spell-check all of it, that would turn up too many spurious
errors.
I tried flyspell-region, and that is one of the biggest surprises: the spell
check is performed just once, and is not updated as I type inside that region.
Well, I can manually recheck, however inconvenient. But the biggest surprise is
trying to remove the spelling marks at the end. After some searching, I found
out about flyspell-delete-all-overlays and flyspell-delete-region-overlays, but
alas, they are not marked as 'interactive'. I wonder how Flyspell thinks users
should remove those marks (how to end the flyspell-region command).
I nevertheless tried to push forwards with Flyspell, because alternatives like
Wcheck Mode or Speck did not seem quite ready yet. Next step was
flyspell-prog-mode . And here I found the next big drawback: it checks literal
strings too, even the filenames inside C's #include <blah/blah-h> preprocessor
directives, littering too much source code with error marks.
Trying to limit spell checking to just source-code comments is hard. I found
this page that explains how to do it:
http://blog.binchen.org/posts/effective-spell-check-in-emacs.html
But I haven't quite understood it yet (I am no Lisp expert). How about adding a
simple customizable variable to turn literal string checking on and off?
To top it all, there is one little surprise in store: disabling
flyspell-persistent-highlight renders flyspell-region useless.
The whole experience reminds me of the expression "death by a thousand paper
cuts".
Please copy me on all the answers or comments, as I am not subscribed to this
mailing list.
Thanks in advance,
rdiez
- Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest,
R. Diez <=
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Emanuel Berg, 2018/07/12
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Brett Gilio, 2018/07/12
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Eli Zaretskii, 2018/07/13
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Gregor Zattler, 2018/07/13
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Devin Prater, 2018/07/13
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Teemu Likonen, 2018/07/13
- Message not available
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Emanuel Berg, 2018/07/13
- Re: Flyspell difficult to configure, documentation not honest, Eric S Fraga, 2018/07/13