spell.txt For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2014 Sep 19LINK

VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar

Spell checking spellLINK

1. Quick start spell-quickstart

2. Remarks on spell checking spell-remarks

3. Generating a spell file spell-mkspell

4. Spell file format spell-file-format

{Vi does not have any of these commands}

Spell checking is not available when the +syntax feature has been disabled

at compile time.

Note: There also is a vimspell plugin. If you have it you can do ":help

vimspell" to find about it. But you will probably want to get rid of the

plugin and use the 'spell' option instead, it works better.

==============================================================================

1. Quick start spell-quickstart E756LINK

This command switches on spell checking:

:setlocal spell spelllang=en_us

This switches on the 'spell' option and specifies to check for US English.

The words that are not recognized are highlighted with one of these:

SpellBad word not recognized hl-SpellBad

SpellCap word not capitalised hl-SpellCap

SpellRare rare word hl-SpellRare

SpellLocal wrong spelling for selected region hl-SpellLocal

Vim only checks words for spelling, there is no grammar check.

If the 'mousemodel' option is set to "popup" and the cursor is on a badly

spelled word or it is "popup_setpos" and the mouse pointer is on a badly

spelled word, then the popup menu will contain a submenu to replace the bad

word. Note: this slows down the appearance of the popup menu. Note for GTK:

don't release the right mouse button until the menu appears, otherwise it

won't work.

To search for the next misspelled word:

]sLINK

]s Move to next misspelled word after the cursor.

A count before the command can be used to repeat.

'wrapscan' applies.

[sLINK

[s Like "]s" but search backwards, find the misspelled

word before the cursor. Doesn't recognize words

split over two lines, thus may stop at words that are

not highlighted as bad. Does not stop at word with

missing capital at the start of a line.

]SLINK

]S Like "]s" but only stop at bad words, not at rare

words or words for another region.

[SLINK

[S Like "]S" but search backwards.

To add words to your own word list:

zgLINK

zg Add word under the cursor as a good word to the first

name in 'spellfile'. A count may precede the command

to indicate the entry in 'spellfile' to be used. A

count of two uses the second entry.

In Visual mode the selected characters are added as a

word (including white space!).

When the cursor is on text that is marked as badly

spelled then the marked text is used.

Otherwise the word under the cursor, separated by

non-word characters, is used.

If the word is explicitly marked as bad word in

another spell file the result is unpredictable.

zGLINK

zG Like "zg" but add the word to the internal word list

internal-wordlist.

zwLINK

zw Like "zg" but mark the word as a wrong (bad) word.

If the word already appears in 'spellfile' it is

turned into a comment line. See spellfile-cleanup

for getting rid of those.

zWLINK

zW Like "zw" but add the word to the internal word list

internal-wordlist.

zuw zug zuwLINK

zug Undo zw and zg, remove the word from the entry in

'spellfile'. Count used as with zg.

zuW zuG zuWLINK

zuG Undo zW and zG, remove the word from the internal

word list. Count used as with zg.

:spe :spellgoodLINK

:[count]spe[llgood] {word}

Add {word} as a good word to 'spellfile', like with

zg. Without count the first name is used, with a

count of two the second entry, etc.

:spe[llgood]! {word} Add {word} as a good word to the internal word list,

like with zG.

:spellw :spellwrongLINK

:[count]spellw[rong] {word}

Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to 'spellfile', as

with zw. Without count the first name is used, with

a count of two the second entry, etc.

:spellw[rong]! {word} Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to the internal word

list, like with zW.

:[count]spellu[ndo] {word} :spellu :spellundoLINK

Like zuw. [count] used as with :spellgood.

:spellu[ndo]! {word} Like zuW. [count] used as with :spellgood.

After adding a word to 'spellfile' with the above commands its associated

".spl" file will automatically be updated and reloaded. If you change

'spellfile' manually you need to use the :mkspell command. This sequence of

commands mostly works well:

:edit <file in 'spellfile'>

(make changes to the spell file)

:mkspell! %

More details about the 'spellfile' format below spell-wordlist-format.

internal-wordlistLINK

The internal word list is used for all buffers where 'spell' is set. It is

not stored, it is lost when you exit Vim. It is also cleared when 'encoding'

is set.

Finding suggestions for bad words:

z=LINK

z= For the word under/after the cursor suggest correctly

spelled words. This also works to find alternatives

for a word that is not highlighted as a bad word,

e.g., when the word after it is bad.

In Visual mode the highlighted text is taken as the

word to be replaced.

The results are sorted on similarity to the word being

replaced.

This may take a long time. Hit CTRL-C when you get

bored.

If the command is used without a count the

alternatives are listed and you can enter the number

of your choice or press <Enter> if you don't want to

replace. You can also use the mouse to click on your

choice (only works if the mouse can be used in Normal

mode and when there are no line wraps). Click on the

first line (the header) to cancel.

The suggestions listed normally replace a highlighted

bad word. Sometimes they include other text, in that

case the replaced text is also listed after a "<".

If a count is used that suggestion is used, without

prompting. For example, "1z=" always takes the first

suggestion.

If 'verbose' is non-zero a score will be displayed

with the suggestions to indicate the likeliness to the

badly spelled word (the higher the score the more

different).

When a word was replaced the redo command "." will

repeat the word replacement. This works like "ciw",

the good word and <Esc>. This does NOT work for Thai

and other languages without spaces between words.

:spellr :spellrepall E752 E753LINK

:spellr[epall] Repeat the replacement done by z= for all matches

with the replaced word in the current window.

In Insert mode, when the cursor is after a badly spelled word, you can use

CTRL-X s to find suggestions. This works like Insert mode completion. Use

CTRL-N to use the next suggestion, CTRL-P to go back. i_CTRL-X_s

The 'spellsuggest' option influences how the list of suggestions is generated

and sorted. See 'spellsuggest'.

The 'spellcapcheck' option is used to check the first word of a sentence

starts with a capital. This doesn't work for the first word in the file.

When there is a line break right after a sentence the highlighting of the next

line may be postponed. Use CTRL-L when needed. Also see set-spc-auto for

how it can be set automatically when 'spelllang' is set.

Vim counts the number of times a good word is encountered. This is used to

sort the suggestions: words that have been seen before get a small bonus,

words that have been seen often get a bigger bonus. The COMMON item in the

affix file can be used to define common words, so that this mechanism also

works in a new or short file spell-COMMON.

==============================================================================

2. Remarks on spell checking spell-remarksLINK

PERFORMANCE

Vim does on-the-fly spell checking. To make this work fast the word list is

loaded in memory. Thus this uses a lot of memory (1 Mbyte or more). There

might also be a noticeable delay when the word list is loaded, which happens

when 'spell' is set and when 'spelllang' is set while 'spell' was already set.

To minimize the delay each word list is only loaded once, it is not deleted

when 'spelllang' is made empty or 'spell' is reset. When 'encoding' is set

all the word lists are reloaded, thus you may notice a delay then too.

REGIONS

A word may be spelled differently in various regions. For example, English

comes in (at least) these variants:

en all regions

en_au Australia

en_ca Canada

en_gb Great Britain

en_nz New Zealand

en_us USA

Words that are not used in one region but are used in another region are

highlighted with SpellLocal hl-SpellLocal.

Always use lowercase letters for the language and region names.

When adding a word with zg or another command it's always added for all

regions. You can change that by manually editing the 'spellfile'. See

spell-wordlist-format. Note that the regions as specified in the files in

'spellfile' are only used when all entries in 'spelllang' specify the same

region (not counting files specified by their .spl name).

spell-germanLINK

Specific exception: For German these special regions are used:

de all German words accepted

de_de old and new spelling

de_19 old spelling

de_20 new spelling

de_at Austria

de_ch Switzerland

spell-russianLINK

Specific exception: For Russian these special regions are used:

ru all Russian words accepted

ru_ru "IE" letter spelling

ru_yo "YO" letter spelling

spell-yiddishLINK

Yiddish requires using "utf-8" encoding, because of the special characters

used. If you are using latin1 Vim will use transliterated (romanized) Yiddish

instead. If you want to use transliterated Yiddish with utf-8 use "yi-tr".

In a table:

'encoding' 'spelllang'

utf-8 yi Yiddish

latin1 yi transliterated Yiddish

utf-8 yi-tr transliterated Yiddish

spell-cjkLINK

Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian characters are normally marked as

errors, because spell checking of these characters is not supported. If

'spelllang' includes "cjk", these characters are not marked as errors. This

is useful when editing text with spell checking while some Asian words are

present.

SPELL FILES spell-loadLINK

Vim searches for spell files in the "spell" subdirectory of the directories in

'runtimepath'. The name is: LL.EEE.spl, where:

LL the language name

EEE the value of 'encoding'

The value for "LL" comes from 'spelllang', but excludes the region name.

Examples:

'spelllang' LL

en_us en

en-rare en-rare

medical_ca medical

Only the first file is loaded, the one that is first in 'runtimepath'. If

this succeeds then additionally files with the name LL.EEE.add.spl are loaded.

All the ones that are found are used.

If no spell file is found the SpellFileMissing autocommand event is

triggered. This may trigger the spellfile.vim plugin to offer you

downloading the spell file.

Additionally, the files related to the names in 'spellfile' are loaded. These

are the files that zg and zw add good and wrong words to.

Exceptions:

- Vim uses "latin1" when 'encoding' is "iso-8859-15". The euro sign doesn't

matter for spelling.

- When no spell file for 'encoding' is found "ascii" is tried. This only

works for languages where nearly all words are ASCII, such as English. It

helps when 'encoding' is not "latin1", such as iso-8859-2, and English text

is being edited. For the ".add" files the same name as the found main

spell file is used.

For example, with these values:

'runtimepath' is "~/.vim,/usr/share/vim70,~/.vim/after"

'encoding' is "iso-8859-2"

'spelllang' is "pl"

Vim will look for:

1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl

2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl

3. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl

4. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl

5. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl

This assumes 1. is not found and 2. is found.

If 'encoding' is "latin1" Vim will look for:

1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.latin1.spl

2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.latin1.spl

3. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.latin1.spl

4. ~/.vim/spell/pl.ascii.spl

5. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.ascii.spl

6. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.ascii.spl

This assumes none of them are found (Polish doesn't make sense when leaving

out the non-ASCII characters).

Spelling for EBCDIC is currently not supported.

A spell file might not be available in the current 'encoding'. See

spell-mkspell about how to create a spell file. Converting a spell file

with "iconv" will NOT work!

Note: on VMS ".{enc}.spl" is changed to "_{enc}.spl" to avoid trouble with

filenames.

spell-sug-file E781LINK

If there is a file with exactly the same name as the ".spl" file but ending in

".sug", that file will be used for giving better suggestions. It isn't loaded

before suggestions are made to reduce memory use.

E758 E759 E778 E779 E780 E782LINK

When loading a spell file Vim checks that it is properly formatted. If you

get an error the file may be truncated, modified or intended for another Vim

version.

SPELLFILE CLEANUP spellfile-cleanupLINK

The zw command turns existing entries in 'spellfile' into comment lines.

This avoids having to write a new file every time, but results in the file

only getting longer, never shorter. To clean up the comment lines in all

".add" spell files do this:

:runtime spell/cleanadd.vim

This deletes all comment lines, except the ones that start with "##". Use

"##" lines to add comments that you want to keep.

You can invoke this script as often as you like. A variable is provided to

skip updating files that have been changed recently. Set it to the number of

seconds that has passed since a file was changed before it will be cleaned.

For example, to clean only files that were not changed in the last hour:

let g:spell_clean_limit = 60 * 60

The default is one second.

WORDS

Vim uses a fixed method to recognize a word. This is independent of

'iskeyword', so that it also works in help files and for languages that

include characters like '-' in 'iskeyword'. The word characters do depend on

'encoding'.

The table with word characters is stored in the main .spl file. Therefore it

matters what the current locale is when generating it! A .add.spl file does

not contain a word table though.

For a word that starts with a digit the digit is ignored, unless the word as a

whole is recognized. Thus if "3D" is a word and "D" is not then "3D" is

recognized as a word, but if "3D" is not a word then only the "D" is marked as

bad. Hex numbers in the form 0x12ab and 0X12AB are recognized.

WORD COMBINATIONS

It is possible to spell-check words that include a space. This is used to

recognize words that are invalid when used by themselves, e.g. for "et al.".

It can also be used to recognize "the the" and highlight it.

The number of spaces is irrelevant. In most cases a line break may also

appear. However, this makes it difficult to find out where to start checking

for spelling mistakes. When you make a change to one line and only that line

is redrawn Vim won't look in the previous line, thus when "et" is at the end

of the previous line "al." will be flagged as an error. And when you type

"the<CR>the" the highlighting doesn't appear until the first line is redrawn.

Use CTRL-L to redraw right away. "[s" will also stop at a word combination

with a line break.

When encountering a line break Vim skips characters such as '*', '>' and '"',

so that comments in C, shell and Vim code can be spell checked.

SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING spell-syntaxLINK

Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be

done:

1. everywhere default

2. in specific items use "contains=@Spell"

3. everywhere but specific items use "contains=@NoSpell"

For the second method adding the @NoSpell cluster will disable spell checking

again. This can be used, for example, to add @Spell to the comments of a

program, and add @NoSpell for items that shouldn't be checked.

Also see :syn-spell for text that is not in a syntax item.

VIM SCRIPTS

If you want to write a Vim script that does something with spelling, you may

find these functions useful:

spellbadword() find badly spelled word at the cursor

spellsuggest() get list of spelling suggestions

soundfold() get the sound-a-like version of a word

SETTING 'spellcapcheck' AUTOMATICALLY set-spc-autoLINK

After the 'spelllang' option has been set successfully, Vim will source the

files "spell/LANG.vim" in 'runtimepath'. "LANG" is the value of 'spelllang'

up to the first comma, dot or underscore. This can be used to set options

specifically for the language, especially 'spellcapcheck'.

The distribution includes a few of these files. Use this command to see what

they do:

:next $VIMRUNTIME/spell/*.vim

Note that the default scripts don't set 'spellcapcheck' if it was changed from

the default value. This assumes the user prefers another value then.

DOUBLE SCORING spell-double-scoringLINK

The 'spellsuggest' option can be used to select "double" scoring. This

mechanism is based on the principle that there are two kinds of spelling

mistakes:

1. You know how to spell the word, but mistype something. This results in a

small editing distance (character swapped/omitted/inserted) and possibly a

word that sounds completely different.

2. You don't know how to spell the word and type something that sounds right.

The edit distance can be big but the word is similar after sound-folding.

Since scores for these two mistakes will be very different we use a list

for each and mix them.

The sound-folding is slow and people that know the language won't make the

second kind of mistakes. Therefore 'spellsuggest' can be set to select the

preferred method for scoring the suggestions.

==============================================================================

3. Generating a spell file spell-mkspellLINK

Vim uses a binary file format for spelling. This greatly speeds up loading

the word list and keeps it small.

.aff .dic MyspellLINK

You can create a Vim spell file from the .aff and .dic files that Myspell

uses. Myspell is used by OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. The OpenOffice .oxt

files are zip files which contain the .aff and .dic files. You should be able

to find them here:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/dictionary

The older, OpenOffice 2 files may be used if this doesn't work:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries

You can also use a plain word list. The results are the same, the choice

depends on what word lists you can find.

If you install Aap (from www.a-a-p.org) you can use the recipes in the

runtime/spell/??/ directories. Aap will take care of downloading the files,

apply patches needed for Vim and build the .spl file.

Make sure your current locale is set properly, otherwise Vim doesn't know what

characters are upper/lower case letters. If the locale isn't available (e.g.,

when using an MS-Windows codepage on Unix) add tables to the .aff file

spell-affix-chars. If the .aff file doesn't define a table then the word

table of the currently active spelling is used. If spelling is not active

then Vim will try to guess.

:mksp :mkspellLINK

:mksp[ell][!] [-ascii] {outname} {inname} ...

Generate a Vim spell file from word lists. Example:

:mkspell /tmp/nl nl_NL.words

E751LINK

When {outname} ends in ".spl" it is used as the output

file name. Otherwise it should be a language name,

such as "en", without the region name. The file

written will be "{outname}.{encoding}.spl", where

{encoding} is the value of the 'encoding' option.

When the output file already exists [!] must be used

to overwrite it.

When the [-ascii] argument is present, words with

non-ascii characters are skipped. The resulting file

ends in "ascii.spl".

The input can be the Myspell format files {inname}.aff

and {inname}.dic. If {inname}.aff does not exist then

{inname} is used as the file name of a plain word

list.

Multiple {inname} arguments can be given to combine

regions into one Vim spell file. Example:

:mkspell ~/.vim/spell/en /tmp/en_US /tmp/en_CA /tmp/en_AU

This combines the English word lists for US, CA and AU

into one en.spl file.

Up to eight regions can be combined. E754 E755LINK

The REP and SAL items of the first .aff file where

they appear are used. spell-REP spell-SAL

E845LINK

This command uses a lot of memory, required to find

the optimal word tree (Polish, Italian and Hungarian

require several hundred Mbyte). The final result will

be much smaller, because compression is used. To

avoid running out of memory compression will be done

now and then. This can be tuned with the 'mkspellmem'

option.

After the spell file was written and it was being used

in a buffer it will be reloaded automatically.

:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}.{enc}.add

Like ":mkspell" above, using {name}.{enc}.add as the

input file and producing an output file in the same

directory that has ".spl" appended.

:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}

Like ":mkspell" above, using {name} as the input file

and producing an output file in the same directory

that has ".{enc}.spl" appended.

Vim will report the number of duplicate words. This might be a mistake in the

list of words. But sometimes it is used to have different prefixes and

suffixes for the same basic word to avoid them combining (e.g. Czech uses

this). If you want Vim to report all duplicate words set the 'verbose'

option.

Since you might want to change a Myspell word list for use with Vim the

following procedure is recommended:

1. Obtain the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files from Myspell.

2. Make a copy of these files to xx_YY.orig.aff and xx_YY.orig.dic.

3. Change the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files to remove bad words, add missing

words, define word characters with FOL/LOW/UPP, etc. The distributed

"*.diff" files can be used.

4. Start Vim with the right locale and use :mkspell to generate the Vim

spell file.

5. Try out the spell file with ":set spell spelllang=xx" if you wrote it in

a spell directory in 'runtimepath', or ":set spelllang=xx.enc.spl" if you

wrote it somewhere else.

When the Myspell files are updated you can merge the differences:

1. Obtain the new Myspell files as xx_YY.new.aff and xx_UU.new.dic.

2. Use Vimdiff to see what changed:

vimdiff xx_YY.orig.dic xx_YY.new.dic

3. Take over the changes you like in xx_YY.dic.

You may also need to change xx_YY.aff.

4. Rename xx_YY.new.dic to xx_YY.orig.dic and xx_YY.new.aff to xx_YY.new.aff.

SPELL FILE VERSIONS E770 E771 E772LINK

Spell checking is a relatively new feature in Vim, thus it's possible that the

.spl file format will be changed to support more languages. Vim will check

the validity of the spell file and report anything wrong.

E771: Old spell file, needs to be updated

This spell file is older than your Vim. You need to update the .spl file.

E772: Spell file is for newer version of Vim

This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim. You need to

update Vim.

E770: Unsupported section in spell file

This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim and contains a

section that is required for the spell file to work. In this case it's

probably a good idea to upgrade your Vim.

SPELL FILE DUMP

If for some reason you want to check what words are supported by the currently

used spelling files, use this command:

:spelldump :spelldLINK

:spelld[ump] Open a new window and fill it with all currently valid

words. Compound words are not included.

Note: For some languages the result may be enormous,

causing Vim to run out of memory.

:spelld[ump]! Like ":spelldump" and include the word count. This is

the number of times the word was found while

updating the screen. Words that are in COMMON items

get a starting count of 10.

The format of the word list is used spell-wordlist-format. You should be

able to read it with ":mkspell" to generate one .spl file that includes all

the words.

When all entries to 'spelllang' use the same regions or no regions at all then

the region information is included in the dumped words. Otherwise only words

for the current region are included and no "/regions" line is generated.

Comment lines with the name of the .spl file are used as a header above the

words that were generated from that .spl file.

SPELL FILE MISSING spell-SpellFileMissing spellfile.vimLINK

If the spell file for the language you are using is not available, you will

get an error message. But if the "spellfile.vim" plugin is active it will

offer you to download the spell file. Just follow the instructions, it will

ask you where to write the file (there must be a writable directory in

'runtimepath' for this).

The plugin has a default place where to look for spell files, on the Vim ftp

server. If you want to use another location or another protocol, set the

g:spellfile_URL variable to the directory that holds the spell files. The

netrw plugin is used for getting the file, look there for the specific

syntax of the URL. Example:

let g:spellfile_URL = 'http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/spell'

You may need to escape special characters.

The plugin will only ask about downloading a language once. If you want to

try again anyway restart Vim, or set g:spellfile_URL to another value (e.g.,

prepend a space).

To avoid using the "spellfile.vim" plugin do this in your vimrc file:

let loaded_spellfile_plugin = 1

Instead of using the plugin you can define a SpellFileMissing autocommand to

handle the missing file yourself. You can use it like this:

:au SpellFileMissing * call Download_spell_file(expand('<amatch>'))

Thus the <amatch> item contains the name of the language. Another important

value is 'encoding', since every encoding has its own spell file. With two

exceptions:

- For ISO-8859-15 (latin9) the name "latin1" is used (the encodings only

differ in characters not used in dictionary words).

- The name "ascii" may also be used for some languages where the words use

only ASCII letters for most of the words.

The default "spellfile.vim" plugin uses this autocommand, if you define your

autocommand afterwards you may want to use ":au! SpellFileMissing" to overrule

it. If you define your autocommand before the plugin is loaded it will notice

this and not do anything.

E797LINK

Note that the SpellFileMissing autocommand must not change or destroy the

buffer the user was editing.

==============================================================================

4. Spell file format spell-file-formatLINK

This is the format of the files that are used by the person who creates and

maintains a word list.

Note that we avoid the word "dictionary" here. That is because the goal of

spell checking differs from writing a dictionary (as in the book). For

spelling we need a list of words that are OK, thus should not be highlighted.

Person and company names will not appear in a dictionary, but do appear in a

word list. And some old words are rarely used while they are common

misspellings. These do appear in a dictionary but not in a word list.

There are two formats: A straight list of words and a list using affix

compression. The files with affix compression are used by Myspell (Mozilla

and OpenOffice.org). This requires two files, one with .aff and one with .dic

extension.

FORMAT OF STRAIGHT WORD LIST spell-wordlist-formatLINK

The words must appear one per line. That is all that is required.

Additionally the following items are recognized:

- Empty and blank lines are ignored.

# comment

- Lines starting with a # are ignored (comment lines).

/encoding=utf-8

- A line starting with "/encoding=", before any word, specifies the encoding

of the file. After the second '=' comes an encoding name. This tells Vim

to setup conversion from the specified encoding to 'encoding'. Thus you can

use one word list for several target encodings.

/regions=usca

- A line starting with "/regions=" specifies the region names that are

supported. Each region name must be two ASCII letters. The first one is

region 1. Thus "/regions=usca" has region 1 "us" and region 2 "ca".

In an addition word list the region names should be equal to the main word

list!

- Other lines starting with '/' are reserved for future use. The ones that

are not recognized are ignored. You do get a warning message, so that you

know something won't work.

- A "/" may follow the word with the following items:

= Case must match exactly.

? Rare word.

! Bad (wrong) word.

digit A region in which the word is valid. If no regions are

specified the word is valid in all regions.

Example:

# This is an example word list comment

/encoding=latin1 encoding of the file

/regions=uscagb regions "us", "ca" and "gb"

example word for all regions

blah/12 word for regions "us" and "ca"

vim/! bad word

Campbell/?3 rare word in region 3 "gb"

's mornings/= keep-case word

Note that when "/=" is used the same word with all upper-case letters is not

accepted. This is different from a word with mixed case that is automatically

marked as keep-case, those words may appear in all upper-case letters.

FORMAT WITH .AFF AND .DIC FILES aff-dic-formatLINK

There are two files: the basic word list and an affix file. The affix file

specifies settings for the language and can contain affixes. The affixes are

used to modify the basic words to get the full word list. This significantly

reduces the number of words, especially for a language like Polish. This is

called affix compression.

The basic word list and the affix file are combined with the ":mkspell"

command and results in a binary spell file. All the preprocessing has been

done, thus this file loads fast. The binary spell file format is described in

the source code (src/spell.c). But only developers need to know about it.

The preprocessing also allows us to take the Myspell language files and modify

them before the Vim word list is made. The tools for this can be found in the

"src/spell" directory.

The format for the affix and word list files is based on what Myspell uses

(the spell checker of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org). A description can be found

here:

http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/affix.readme

Note that affixes are case sensitive, this isn't obvious from the description.

Vim supports quite a few extras. They are described below spell-affix-vim.

Attempts have been made to keep this compatible with other spell checkers, so

that the same files can often be used. One other project that offers more

than Myspell is Hunspell ( http://hunspell.sf.net ).

WORD LIST FORMAT spell-dic-formatLINK

A short example, with line numbers:

1 1234

2 aan

3 Als

4 Etten-Leur

5 et al.

6 's-Gravenhage

7 's-Gravenhaags

8 # word that differs between regions

9 kado/1

10 cadeau/2

11 TCP,IP

12 /the S affix may add a 's'

13 bedel/S

The first line contains the number of words. Vim ignores it, but you do get

an error message if it's not there. E760LINK

What follows is one word per line. White space at the end of the line is

ignored, all other white space matters. The encoding is specified in the

affix file spell-SET.

Comment lines start with '#' or '/'. See the example lines 8 and 12. Note

that putting a comment after a word is NOT allowed:

someword # comment that causes an error!

After the word there is an optional slash and flags. Most of these flags are

letters that indicate the affixes that can be used with this word. These are

specified with SFX and PFX lines in the .aff file, see spell-SFX and

spell-PFX. Vim allows using other flag types with the FLAG item in the

affix file spell-FLAG.

When the word only has lower-case letters it will also match with the word

starting with an upper-case letter.

When the word includes an upper-case letter, this means the upper-case letter

is required at this position. The same word with a lower-case letter at this

position will not match. When some of the other letters are upper-case it will

not match either.

The word with all upper-case characters will always be OK,

word list matches does not match

als als Als ALS ALs AlS aLs aLS

Als Als ALS als ALs AlS aLs aLS

ALS ALS als Als ALs AlS aLs aLS

AlS AlS ALS als Als ALs aLs aLS

The KEEPCASE affix ID can be used to specifically match a word with identical

case only, see below spell-KEEPCASE.

Note: in line 5 to 7 non-word characters are used. You can include any

character in a word. When checking the text a word still only matches when it

appears with a non-word character before and after it. For Myspell a word

starting with a non-word character probably won't work.

In line 12 the word "TCP/IP" is defined. Since the slash has a special

meaning the comma is used instead. This is defined with the SLASH item in the

affix file, see spell-SLASH. Note that without this SLASH item the word

will be "TCP,IP".

AFFIX FILE FORMAT spell-aff-format spell-affix-vimLINK

spell-affix-commentLINK

Comment lines in the .aff file start with a '#':

# comment line

Items with a fixed number of arguments can be followed by a comment. But only

if none of the arguments can contain white space. The comment must start with

a "#" character. Example:

KEEPCASE = # fix case for words with this flag

ENCODING spell-SETLINK

The affix file can be in any encoding that is supported by "iconv". However,

in some cases the current locale should also be set properly at the time

:mkspell is invoked. Adding FOL/LOW/UPP lines removes this requirement

spell-FOL.

The encoding should be specified before anything where the encoding matters.

The encoding applies both to the affix file and the dictionary file. It is

done with a SET line:

SET utf-8

The encoding can be different from the value of the 'encoding' option at the

time ":mkspell" is used. Vim will then convert everything to 'encoding' and

generate a spell file for 'encoding'. If some of the used characters to not

fit in 'encoding' you will get an error message.

spell-affix-mbyteLINK

When using a multi-byte encoding it's possible to use more different affix

flags. But Myspell doesn't support that, thus you may not want to use it

anyway. For compatibility use an 8-bit encoding.

INFORMATION

These entries in the affix file can be used to add information to the spell

file. There are no restrictions on the format, but they should be in the

right encoding.

spell-NAME spell-VERSION spell-HOMELINK

spell-AUTHOR spell-EMAIL spell-COPYRIGHTLINK

NAME Name of the language

VERSION 1.0.1 with fixes

HOME http://www.myhome.eu

AUTHOR John Doe

EMAIL john AT Doe DOT net

COPYRIGHT LGPL

These fields are put in the .spl file as-is. The :spellinfo command can be

used to view the info.

:spellinfo :spelliLINK

:spelli[nfo] Display the information for the spell file(s) used for

the current buffer.

CHARACTER TABLES

spell-affix-charsLINK

When using an 8-bit encoding the affix file should define what characters are

word characters. This is because the system where ":mkspell" is used may not

support a locale with this encoding and isalpha() won't work. For example

when using "cp1250" on Unix.

E761 E762 spell-FOLLINK

spell-LOW spell-UPPLINK

Three lines in the affix file are needed. Simplistic example:

FOL áëñ

LOW áëñ

UPP ÁËÑ

All three lines must have exactly the same number of characters.

The "FOL" line specifies the case-folded characters. These are used to

compare words while ignoring case. For most encodings this is identical to

the lower case line.

The "LOW" line specifies the characters in lower-case. Mostly it's equal to

the "FOL" line.

The "UPP" line specifies the characters with upper-case. That is, a character

is upper-case where it's different from the character at the same position in

"FOL".

An exception is made for the German sharp s ß. The upper-case version is

"SS". In the FOL/LOW/UPP lines it should be included, so that it's recognized

as a word character, but use the ß character in all three.

ASCII characters should be omitted, Vim always handles these in the same way.

When the encoding is UTF-8 no word characters need to be specified.

E763LINK

Vim allows you to use spell checking for several languages in the same file.

You can list them in the 'spelllang' option. As a consequence all spell files

for the same encoding must use the same word characters, otherwise they can't

be combined without errors.

If you get an E763 warning that the word tables differ you need to update your

".spl" spell files. If you downloaded the files, get the latest version of

all spell files you use. If you are only using one, e.g., German, then also

download the recent English spell files. Otherwise generate the .spl file

again with :mkspell. If you still get errors check the FOL, LOW and UPP

lines in the used .aff files.

The XX.ascii.spl spell file generated with the "-ascii" argument will not

contain the table with characters, so that it can be combine with spell files

for any encoding. The .add.spl files also do not contain the table.

MID-WORD CHARACTERS

spell-midwordLINK

Some characters are only to be considered word characters if they are used in

between two ordinary word characters. An example is the single quote: It is

often used to put text in quotes, thus it can't be recognized as a word

character, but when it appears in between word characters it must be part of

the word. This is needed to detect a spelling error such as they'are. That

should be they're, but since "they" and "are" are words themselves that would

go unnoticed.

These characters are defined with MIDWORD in the .aff file. Example:

MIDWORD '-

FLAG TYPES spell-FLAGLINK

Flags are used to specify the affixes that can be used with a word and for

other properties of the word. Normally single-character flags are used. This

limits the number of possible flags, especially for 8-bit encodings. The FLAG

item can be used if more affixes are to be used. Possible values:

FLAG long use two-character flags

FLAG num use numbers, from 1 up to 65000

FLAG caplong use one-character flags without A-Z and two-character

flags that start with A-Z

With "FLAG num" the numbers in a list of affixes need to be separated with a

comma: "234,2143,1435". This method is inefficient, but useful if the file is

generated with a program.

When using "caplong" the two-character flags all start with a capital: "Aa",

"B1", "BB", etc. This is useful to use one-character flags for the most

common items and two-character flags for uncommon items.

Note: When using utf-8 only characters up to 65000 may be used for flags.

Note: even when using "num" or "long" the number of flags available to

compounding and prefixes is limited to about 250.

AFFIXES

spell-PFX spell-SFXLINK

The usual PFX (prefix) and SFX (suffix) lines are supported (see the Myspell

documentation or the Aspell manual:

http://aspell.net/man-html/Affix-Compression.html).

Summary:

SFX L Y 2

SFX L 0 re [^x]

SFX L 0 ro x

The first line is a header and has four fields:

SFX {flag} {combine} {count}

{flag} The name used for the suffix. Mostly it's a single letter,

but other characters can be used, see spell-FLAG.

{combine} Can be 'Y' or 'N'. When 'Y' then the word plus suffix can

also have a prefix. When 'N' then a prefix is not allowed.

{count} The number of lines following. If this is wrong you will get

an error message.

For PFX the fields are exactly the same.

The basic format for the following lines is:

SFX {flag} {strip} {add} {condition} {extra}

{flag} Must be the same as the {flag} used in the first line.

{strip} Characters removed from the basic word. There is no check if

the characters are actually there, only the length is used (in

bytes). This better match the {condition}, otherwise strange

things may happen. If the {strip} length is equal to or

longer than the basic word the suffix won't be used.

When {strip} is 0 (zero) then nothing is stripped.

{add} Characters added to the basic word, after removing {strip}.

Optionally there is a '/' followed by flags. The flags apply

to the word plus affix. See spell-affix-flags

{condition} A simplistic pattern. Only when this matches with a basic

word will the suffix be used for that word. This is normally

for using one suffix letter with different {add} and {strip}

fields for words with different endings.

When {condition} is a . (dot) there is no condition.

The pattern may contain:

- Literal characters.

- A set of characters in []. [abc] matches a, b and c.

A dash is allowed for a range [a-c], but this is

Vim-specific.

- A set of characters that starts with a ^, meaning the

complement of the specified characters. [^abc] matches any

character but a, b and c.

{extra} Optional extra text:

# comment Comment is ignored

- Hunspell uses this, ignored

For PFX the fields are the same, but the {strip}, {add} and {condition} apply

to the start of the word.

Note: Myspell ignores any extra text after the relevant info. Vim requires

this text to start with a "#" so that mistakes don't go unnoticed. Example:

SFX F 0 in [^i]n # Spion > Spionin

SFX F 0 nen in # Bauerin > Bauerinnen

However, to avoid lots of errors in affix files written for Myspell, you can

add the IGNOREEXTRA flag.

Apparently Myspell allows an affix name to appear more than once. Since this

might also be a mistake, Vim checks for an extra "S". The affix files for

Myspell that use this feature apparently have this flag. Example:

SFX a Y 1 S

SFX a 0 an .

SFX a Y 2 S

SFX a 0 en .

SFX a 0 on .

AFFIX FLAGS spell-affix-flagsLINK

This is a feature that comes from Hunspell: The affix may specify flags. This

works similar to flags specified on a basic word. The flags apply to the

basic word plus the affix (but there are restrictions). Example:

SFX S Y 1

SFX S 0 s .

SFX A Y 1

SFX A 0 able/S .

When the dictionary file contains "drink/AS" then these words are possible:

drink

drinks uses S suffix

drinkable uses A suffix

drinkables uses A suffix and then S suffix

Generally the flags of the suffix are added to the flags of the basic word,

both are used for the word plus suffix. But the flags of the basic word are

only used once for affixes, except that both one prefix and one suffix can be

used when both support combining.

Specifically, the affix flags can be used for:

- Suffixes on suffixes, as in the example above. This works once, thus you

can have two suffixes on a word (plus one prefix).

- Making the word with the affix rare, by using the spell-RARE flag.

- Exclude the word with the affix from compounding, by using the

spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG flag.

- Allow the word with the affix to be part of a compound word on the side of

the affix with the spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG.

- Use the NEEDCOMPOUND flag: word plus affix can only be used as part of a

compound word. spell-NEEDCOMPOUND

- Compound flags: word plus affix can be part of a compound word at the end,

middle, start, etc. The flags are combined with the flags of the basic

word. spell-compound

- NEEDAFFIX: another affix is needed to make a valid word.

- CIRCUMFIX, as explained just below.

IGNOREEXTRA spell-IGNOREEXTRALINK

Normally Vim gives an error for an extra field that does not start with '#'.

This avoids errors going unnoticed. However, some files created for Myspell

or Hunspell may contain many entries with an extra field. Use the IGNOREEXTRA

flag to avoid lots of errors.

CIRCUMFIX spell-CIRCUMFIXLINK

The CIRCUMFIX flag means a prefix and suffix must be added at the same time.

If a prefix has the CIRCUMFIX flag than only suffixes with the CIRCUMFIX flag

can be added, and the other way around.

An alternative is to only specify the suffix, and give the that suffix two

flags: The required prefix and the NEEDAFFIX flag. spell-NEEDAFFIX

PFXPOSTPONE spell-PFXPOSTPONELINK

When an affix file has very many prefixes that apply to many words it's not

possible to build the whole word list in memory. This applies to Hebrew (a

list with all words is over a Gbyte). In that case applying prefixes must be

postponed. This makes spell checking slower. It is indicated by this keyword

in the .aff file:

PFXPOSTPONE

Only prefixes without a chop string and without flags can be postponed.

Prefixes with a chop string or with flags will still be included in the word

list. An exception if the chop string is one character and equal to the last

character of the added string, but in lower case. Thus when the chop string

is used to allow the following word to start with an upper case letter.

WORDS WITH A SLASH spell-SLASHLINK

The slash is used in the .dic file to separate the basic word from the affix

letters and other flags. Unfortunately, this means you cannot use a slash in

a word. Thus "TCP/IP" is not a word but "TCP" with the flags "IP". To include

a slash in the word put a backslash before it: "TCP\/IP". In the rare case

you want to use a backslash inside a word you need to use two backslashes.

Any other use of the backslash is reserved for future expansion.

KEEP-CASE WORDS spell-KEEPCASELINK

In the affix file a KEEPCASE line can be used to define the affix name used

for keep-case words. Example:

KEEPCASE =

This flag is not supported by Myspell. It has the meaning that case matters.

This can be used if the word does not have the first letter in upper case at

the start of a sentence. Example:

word list matches does not match

's morgens/= 's morgens 'S morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS

's Morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS 'S morgens 's morgens

The flag can also be used to avoid that the word matches when it is in all

upper-case letters.

RARE WORDS spell-RARELINK

In the affix file a RARE line can be used to define the affix name used for

rare words. Example:

RARE ?

Rare words are highlighted differently from bad words. This is to be used for

words that are correct for the language, but are hardly ever used and could be

a typing mistake anyway. When the same word is found as good it won't be

highlighted as rare.

This flag can also be used on an affix, so that a basic word is not rare but

the basic word plus affix is rare spell-affix-flags. However, if the word

also appears as a good word in another way (e.g., in another region) it won't

be marked as rare.

BAD WORDS spell-BADLINK

In the affix file a BAD line can be used to define the affix name used for

bad words. Example:

BAD !

This can be used to exclude words that would otherwise be good. For example

"the the" in the .dic file:

the the/!

Once a word has been marked as bad it won't be undone by encountering the same

word as good.

The flag also applies to the word with affixes, thus this can be used to mark

a whole bunch of related words as bad.

spell-FORBIDDENWORDLINK

FORBIDDENWORD can be used just like BAD. For compatibility with Hunspell.

spell-NEEDAFFIXLINK

The NEEDAFFIX flag is used to require that a word is used with an affix. The

word itself is not a good word (unless there is an empty affix). Example:

NEEDAFFIX +

COMPOUND WORDS spell-compoundLINK

A compound word is a longer word made by concatenating words that appear in

the .dic file. To specify which words may be concatenated a character is

used. This character is put in the list of affixes after the word. We will

call this character a flag here. Obviously these flags must be different from

any affix IDs used.

spell-COMPOUNDFLAGLINK

The Myspell compatible method uses one flag, specified with COMPOUNDFLAG. All

words with this flag combine in any order. This means there is no control

over which word comes first. Example:

COMPOUNDFLAG c

spell-COMPOUNDRULELINK

A more advanced method to specify how compound words can be formed uses

multiple items with multiple flags. This is not compatible with Myspell 3.0.

Let's start with an example:

COMPOUNDRULE c+

COMPOUNDRULE se

The first line defines that words with the "c" flag can be concatenated in any

order. The second line defines compound words that are made of one word with

the "s" flag and one word with the "e" flag. With this dictionary:

bork/c

onion/s

soup/e

You can make these words:

bork

borkbork

borkborkbork

(etc.)

onion

soup

onionsoup

The COMPOUNDRULE item may appear multiple times. The argument is made out of

one or more groups, where each group can be:

one flag e.g., c

alternate flags inside [] e.g., [abc]

Optionally this may be followed by:

* the group appears zero or more times, e.g., sm*e

+ the group appears one or more times, e.g., c+

? the group appears zero times or once, e.g., x?

This is similar to the regexp pattern syntax (but not the same!). A few

examples with the sequence of word flags they require:

COMPOUNDRULE x+ x xx xxx etc.

COMPOUNDRULE yz yz

COMPOUNDRULE x+z xz xxz xxxz etc.

COMPOUNDRULE yx+ yx yxx yxxx etc.

COMPOUNDRULE xy?z xz xyz

COMPOUNDRULE [abc]z az bz cz

COMPOUNDRULE [abc]+z az aaz abaz bz baz bcbz cz caz cbaz etc.

COMPOUNDRULE a[xyz]+ ax axx axyz ay ayx ayzz az azy azxy etc.

COMPOUNDRULE sm*e se sme smme smmme etc.

COMPOUNDRULE s[xyz]*e se sxe sxye sxyxe sye syze sze szye szyxe etc.

A specific example: Allow a compound to be made of two words and a dash:

In the .aff file:

COMPOUNDRULE sde

NEEDAFFIX x

COMPOUNDWORDMAX 3

COMPOUNDMIN 1

In the .dic file:

start/s

end/e

-/xd

This allows for the word "start-end", but not "startend".

An additional implied rule is that, without further flags, a word with a

prefix cannot be compounded after another word, and a word with a suffix

cannot be compounded with a following word. Thus the affix cannot appear

on the inside of a compound word. This can be changed with the

spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG.

spell-NEEDCOMPOUNDLINK

The NEEDCOMPOUND flag is used to require that a word is used as part of a

compound word. The word itself is not a good word. Example:

NEEDCOMPOUND &

spell-ONLYINCOMPOUNDLINK

The ONLYINCOMPOUND does exactly the same as NEEDCOMPOUND. Supported for

compatibility with Hunspell.

spell-COMPOUNDMINLINK

The minimal character length of a word used for compounding is specified with

COMPOUNDMIN. Example:

COMPOUNDMIN 5

When omitted there is no minimal length. Obviously you could just leave out

the compound flag from short words instead, this feature is present for

compatibility with Myspell.

spell-COMPOUNDWORDMAXLINK

The maximum number of words that can be concatenated into a compound word is

specified with COMPOUNDWORDMAX. Example:

COMPOUNDWORDMAX 3

When omitted there is no maximum. It applies to all compound words.

To set a limit for words with specific flags make sure the items in

COMPOUNDRULE where they appear don't allow too many words.

spell-COMPOUNDSYLMAXLINK

The maximum number of syllables that a compound word may contain is specified

with COMPOUNDSYLMAX. Example:

COMPOUNDSYLMAX 6

This has no effect if there is no SYLLABLE item. Without COMPOUNDSYLMAX there

is no limit on the number of syllables.

If both COMPOUNDWORDMAX and COMPOUNDSYLMAX are defined, a compound word is

accepted if it fits one of the criteria, thus is either made from up to

COMPOUNDWORDMAX words or contains up to COMPOUNDSYLMAX syllables.

spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAGLINK

The COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG specifies a flag that can be used on an affix. It

means that the word plus affix cannot be used in a compound word. Example:

affix file:

COMPOUNDFLAG c

COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG x

SFX a Y 2

SFX a 0 s .

SFX a 0 ize/x .

dictionary:

word/c

util/ac

This allows for "wordutil" and "wordutils" but not "wordutilize".

Note: this doesn't work for postponed prefixes yet.

spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAGLINK

The COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG specifies a flag that can be used on an affix. It

means that the word plus affix can also be used in a compound word in a way

where the affix ends up halfway the word. Without this flag that is not

allowed.

Note: this doesn't work for postponed prefixes yet.

spell-COMPOUNDROOTLINK

The COMPOUNDROOT flag is used for words in the dictionary that are already a

compound. This means it counts for two words when checking the compounding

rules. Can also be used for an affix to count the affix as a compounding

word.

spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERNLINK

CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN is used to define patterns that, when matching at the

position where two words are compounded together forbids the compound.

For example:

CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN o e

This forbids compounding if the first word ends in "o" and the second word

starts with "e".

The arguments must be plain text, no patterns are actually supported, despite

the item name. Case is always ignored.

The Hunspell feature to use three arguments and flags is not supported.

spell-SYLLABLELINK

The SYLLABLE item defines characters or character sequences that are used to

count the number of syllables in a word. Example:

SYLLABLE aáeéiíoóöõuúüûy/aa/au/ea/ee/ei/ie/oa/oe/oo/ou/uu/ui

Before the first slash is the set of characters that are counted for one

syllable, also when repeated and mixed, until the next character that is not

in this set. After the slash come sequences of characters that are counted

for one syllable. These are preferred over using characters from the set.

With the example "ideeen" has three syllables, counted by "i", "ee" and "e".

Only case-folded letters need to be included.

Another way to restrict compounding was mentioned above: Adding the

spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG flag to an affix causes all words that are made

with that affix to not be used for compounding.

UNLIMITED COMPOUNDING spell-NOBREAKLINK

For some languages, such as Thai, there is no space in between words. This

looks like all words are compounded. To specify this use the NOBREAK item in

the affix file, without arguments:

NOBREAK

Vim will try to figure out where one word ends and a next starts. When there

are spelling mistakes this may not be quite right.

spell-COMMONLINK

Common words can be specified with the COMMON item. This will give better

suggestions when editing a short file. Example:

COMMON the of to and a in is it you that he was for on are

The words must be separated by white space, up to 25 per line.

When multiple regions are specified in a ":mkspell" command the common words

for all regions are combined and used for all regions.

spell-NOSPLITSUGSLINK

This item indicates that splitting a word to make suggestions is not a good

idea. Split-word suggestions will appear only when there are few similar

words.

NOSPLITSUGS

spell-NOSUGGESTLINK

The flag specified with NOSUGGEST can be used for words that will not be

suggested. Can be used for obscene words.

NOSUGGEST %

REPLACEMENTS spell-REPLINK

In the affix file REP items can be used to define common mistakes. This is

used to make spelling suggestions. The items define the "from" text and the

"to" replacement. Example:

REP 4

REP f ph

REP ph f

REP k ch

REP ch k

The first line specifies the number of REP lines following. Vim ignores the

number, but it must be there (for compatibility with Myspell).

Don't include simple one-character replacements or swaps. Vim will try these

anyway. You can include whole words if you want to, but you might want to use

the "file:" item in 'spellsuggest' instead.

You can include a space by using an underscore:

REP the_the the

SIMILAR CHARACTERS spell-MAP E783LINK

In the affix file MAP items can be used to define letters that are very much

alike. This is mostly used for a letter with different accents. This is used

to prefer suggestions with these letters substituted. Example:

MAP 2

MAP eéëêè

MAP uüùúû

The first line specifies the number of MAP lines following. Vim ignores the

number, but the line must be there.

Each letter must appear in only one of the MAP items. It's a bit more

efficient if the first letter is ASCII or at least one without accents.

.SUG FILE spell-NOSUGFILELINK

When soundfolding is specified in the affix file then ":mkspell" will normally

produce a .sug file next to the .spl file. This file is used to find

suggestions by their sound-a-like form quickly. At the cost of a lot of

memory (the amount depends on the number of words, :mkspell will display an

estimate when it's done).

To avoid producing a .sug file use this item in the affix file:

NOSUGFILE

Users can simply omit the .sug file if they don't want to use it.

SOUND-A-LIKE spell-SALLINK

In the affix file SAL items can be used to define the sounds-a-like mechanism

to be used. The main items define the "from" text and the "to" replacement.

Simplistic example:

SAL CIA X

SAL CH X

SAL C K

SAL K K

There are a few rules and this can become quite complicated. An explanation

how it works can be found in the Aspell manual:

http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-Code.html.

There are a few special items:

SAL followup true

SAL collapse_result true

SAL remove_accents true

"1" has the same meaning as "true". Any other value means "false".

SIMPLE SOUNDFOLDING spell-SOFOFROM spell-SOFOTOLINK

The SAL mechanism is complex and slow. A simpler mechanism is mapping all

characters to another character, mapping similar sounding characters to the

same character. At the same time this does case folding. You can not have

both SAL items and simple soundfolding.

There are two items required: one to specify the characters that are mapped

and one that specifies the characters they are mapped to. They must have

exactly the same number of characters. Example:

SOFOFROM abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

SOFOTO ebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkesebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkes

In the example all vowels are mapped to the same character 'e'. Another

method would be to leave out all vowels. Some characters that sound nearly

the same and are often mixed up, such as 'm' and 'n', are mapped to the same

character. Don't do this too much, all words will start looking alike.

Characters that do not appear in SOFOFROM will be left out, except that all

white space is replaced by one space. Sequences of the same character in

SOFOFROM are replaced by one.

You can use the soundfold() function to try out the results. Or set the

'verbose' option to see the score in the output of the z= command.

UNSUPPORTED ITEMS spell-affix-not-supportedLINK

These items appear in the affix file of other spell checkers. In Vim they are

ignored, not supported or defined in another way.

ACCENT (Hunspell) spell-ACCENTLINK

Use MAP instead. spell-MAP

BREAK (Hunspell) spell-BREAKLINK

Define break points. Unclear how it works exactly.

Not supported.

CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE (Hunspell) spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDCASELINK

Disallow uppercase letters at compound word boundaries.

Not supported.

CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP (Hunspell) spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDDUPLINK

Disallow using the same word twice in a compound. Not

supported.

CHECKCOMPOUNDREP (Hunspell) spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDREPLINK

Something about using REP items and compound words. Not

supported.

CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE (Hunspell) spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLELINK

Forbid three identical characters when compounding. Not

supported.

COMPLEXPREFIXES (Hunspell) spell-COMPLEXPREFIXESLINK

Enables using two prefixes. Not supported.

COMPOUND (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDLINK

This is one line with the count of COMPOUND items, followed by

that many COMPOUND lines with a pattern.

Remove the first line with the count and rename the other

items to COMPOUNDRULE spell-COMPOUNDRULE

COMPOUNDFIRST (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDFIRSTLINK

Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. spell-COMPOUNDRULE

COMPOUNDBEGIN (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDBEGINLINK

Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. spell-COMPOUNDRULE

COMPOUNDEND (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDENDLINK

Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. spell-COMPOUNDRULE

COMPOUNDMIDDLE (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDMIDDLELINK

Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. spell-COMPOUNDRULE

COMPOUNDRULES (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDRULESLINK

Number of COMPOUNDRULE lines following. Ignored, but the

argument must be a number.

COMPOUNDSYLLABLE (Hunspell) spell-COMPOUNDSYLLABLELINK

Use SYLLABLE and COMPOUNDSYLMAX instead. spell-SYLLABLE

spell-COMPOUNDSYLMAX

KEY (Hunspell) spell-KEYLINK

Define characters that are close together on the keyboard.

Used to give better suggestions. Not supported.

LANG (Hunspell) spell-LANGLINK

This specifies language-specific behavior. This actually

moves part of the language knowledge into the program,

therefore Vim does not support it. Each language property

must be specified separately.

LEMMA_PRESENT (Hunspell) spell-LEMMA_PRESENTLINK

Only needed for morphological analysis.

MAXNGRAMSUGS (Hunspell) spell-MAXNGRAMSUGSLINK

Set number of n-gram suggestions. Not supported.

PSEUDOROOT (Hunspell) spell-PSEUDOROOTLINK

Use NEEDAFFIX instead. spell-NEEDAFFIX

SUGSWITHDOTS (Hunspell) spell-SUGSWITHDOTSLINK

Adds dots to suggestions. Vim doesn't need this.

SYLLABLENUM (Hunspell) spell-SYLLABLENUMLINK

Not supported.

TRY (Myspell, Hunspell, others) spell-TRYLINK

Vim does not use the TRY item, it is ignored. For making

suggestions the actual characters in the words are used, that

is much more efficient.

WORDCHARS (Hunspell) spell-WORDCHARSLINK

Used to recognize words. Vim doesn't need it, because there

is no need to separate words before checking them (using a

trie instead of a hashtable).

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