4.2 The Options

The following is a list of available options broken down by category. Each entry has the following format:

option[,single-letter-abbreviation]

(type) description

Where single letter options are specified as they would appear at the command line, ie with the preceding dash. Boolean single letter options are specified in the following format:

-<abbreviation to enable>|-<abbreviation to disable>

option is one of the following: boolean, string, file, dir, integer, or list.

String, file, dir, and integer types are all value options which can only take a specific type of value.

4.2.1 Dictionary Options

The following options may be used to control which dictionaries to use and how they behave (for more information see How Aspell Selects an Appropriate Dictionary):

master,-d

(string) Base name of the dictionary to use. If this option is specified then Aspell will either use this dictionary or die.

dict-dir

(dir) Location of the main word list.

lang

(string) Language to use. It follows the same format of the LANG environment variable on most systems. It consists of the two letter ISO 639 language code and an optional two letter ISO 3166 country code after a dash or underscore. The default value is based on the value of the LC_MESSAGES locale.

size

(string) The preferred size of the word list. This consists of a two char digit code describing the size of the list, with typical values of: 10=tiny, 20=really small, 30=small, 40=med-small, 50=med, 60=med-large, 70=large, 80=huge, 90=insane.

variety

(list) Any extra information to distinguish two different words lists that have the same language and size.

word-list-path

(list) Search path for word list information files.

personal,-p

(file) Personal word list file name.

repl

(file) Replacements list file name.

extra-dicts

(list) Extra dictionaries to use.

dict-alias

(list) create dictionary aliases. Each entry has the form `from to'. Will override any system dictionaries that are present.

4.2.2 Encoding Options

These options control the encoding the document is expected to be in and how it is displayed.

encoding

(string) The encoding the input text is in. Valid values include, but not limited to, `iso-8859-*', `utf-8', `ucs-2', `ucs-4'. When using the Aspell utility the default encoding is based on the current locale. Thus if your locale currently uses the `utf-8' encoding than everything will be in UTF-8. The `ucs-2' and `ucs-4' encodings are intended to be used by other programs using the Aspell library and is not supported by the Aspell utility.

normalize

(boolean) Perform Unicode normalization. Enabled by default.

norm-strict

(boolean) Avoid lossy conversions when normalizing. Lossy conversions includes compatibility mappings such as splitting the letter `OE' (U+152) into `O' and `E' (when the combined letter is not available), and mappings which will remove accents. Disabled by default except when creating dictionaries.

norm-form

(string) The normalization form the output should be in. This option primarily effects the normalization form of the suggestions as when spell checkering as the actual text is unchanged unless there is an error. Valid values are `none', `nfd' for fully decomposition (Normalization Form D), `nfc' for Normalization Form C, or `comp' for fully composed. `comp' is like `nfc' except that full composition is used rather than canonical composition. The normalize option must be enabled for this option to be used.

norm-required

(boolean) Set to true when the current language requires Unicode normalization. This is generally the case when private use characters are used internally by Aspell or when Normalization Form C is not the same as full composition.

4.2.3 Checker Options

These options control the behavior of Aspell when checking documents.

ignore,-W

(integer) Ignore words with N characters or less

ignore-repl

(boolean) Ignore commands to store replacement pairs.

save-repl

(boolean) Save the replacement word list on save all.

keyboard

(file) The base name of the keyboard definition file to use (see Notes on Typo-Analysis)

sug-mode

(mode) Suggestion mode = `ultra' | `fast' | `normal' | `slow' | `bad-spellers' (see Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes)

ignore-case

(boolean) Ignore case when checking words.

ignore-accents

(boolean) Ignore accents when checking words – currently ignored.

4.2.4 Filter Options

These options modify the behavior of the Aspell filter interface in general (for more information see see Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes).

filter

(list) filters to use

filter-path

(list) Where to look when loading filter and filter modes.

mode

(string) Sets the filter mode. Possible values include, but not limited to, `none', `url', `email', `sgml', or `tex'. (The shortcut options -e may be used for email, -H for HTML, or -t for TeX).

These options belong to filters packaged along with Aspell standard distribution. These options may be prefixed by the keyword f- in order to explicitly indicate that they are options recognized by a filter and not by Aspell itself.

4.2.4.1 email

This filter hides quoting characters and email preamble and other parts of an email which need not to be spell checked.

email-quote

(list) Email quote characters.

email-margin

(integer) The number of characters that can appear before the quote character

4.2.4.2 html

This filter converts an HTML source file into a format which eases spell checking of HTML texts by Aspell.

html-check

(list) HTML attributes to always check, such as alt= (alternate text).

html-skip

(list) HTML tags to always skip the contents of, such as <script>.

4.2.4.3 sgml

This filter is identical to the HTML filter except that its options has different default values which are currently the empty list.

4.2.4.4 tex/latex

This filter hides all LaTeX commands and corresponding parameters not being readable text in LaTeX output from Aspell.

tex-command

(list) TeX commands

tex-check-comments

(boolean) check TeX comments

tex-form

(string) The preferred form that output should be in. Either `single' or `multi' to use TeX commands to encode non-ASCII characters.

4.2.4.5 texinfo

This filter hides all Texinfo commands from Aspell. It can also hide Texinfo parameters and environments not corresponding to readable text.

texinfo-ignore

(list) Texinfo command to ignore the parameters of.

texinfo-ignore-env

(list) Texinfo environments to ignore.

4.2.4.6 genconv

This filter converts text from a single character encoding (such as Unicode) to a multi character encoding (such as old ASCII encoded used to encode accents). It can also be used to convert text the other way around.

genconv-file

(string) The data file to use for the conversion.

genconv-form

(string) The preferred form that output should be in. Currently either `single' or `multi' to use the multi character encoding.

4.2.4.7 context

This filter can be used to spell check source codes, HTML sources and other texts which consist of different contexts. These contexts must be separated by pairs of unique delimiters. The different contexts may not be dependent upon each other except for initial context which is assumed if not any other context applies.

context-visible-first

(boolean) Switches the context which should be visible to Aspell. Per default the initial context is assumed to be invisible as one would expect when spell checking source files of programs where relevant parts are contained in string constants and comments but not in the remaining code. If set to true the initial context is visible while the delimited ones are hidden.

add|rem-context-delimiters

(list) Add or remove pairs of delimiters. This allows you to specify the character, or sequences of characters, which should be used to switch contexts and therefore have to be escaped by `\' if they should appear literally. The two delimiting chars belonging to one pair have to be separated by a space character. If multiple pairs are specified by one add|rem-context-delimiters call the different pairs have to be separated by a literal comma. Per default the delimiters are set to C/C++ comment and string constant delimiters. If the end of line delimits a context than this has to be indicated by the literal `\0' string.

4.2.5 Run-together Word Options

These may be used to control the behavior of run-together words (for more information see Controlling the Behavior of Run-together Words):

run-together,-C|-B

(boolean) consider run-together words valid

run-together-limit

(integer) maximum number of words that can be strung together

run-together-min

(integer) minimal length of interior words

4.2.6 Miscellaneous Options

Miscellaneous other options that don't fall under any other category

conf

(file) Main configuration file. This file overrides Aspell's global defaults.

conf-dir

(dir) location of main configuration file

data-dir

(dir) location of language data files

local-data-dir

(dir) alternative location of language data files. This directory is searched before data-dir. It defaults to the same directory the actual main word list is in (which is not necessarily dict-dir)

home-dir

(dir) location for personal files

per-conf

(file) personal configuration file. This file overrides options found in the global conf file

keyboard

(file) use this keyboard layout for suggesting possible words. These spelling errors happen if a user accidently presses a key next to the intended correct key. The default is keyboard standard. If you are creating documents, you may want to set it according to your particular type of keyboard. If spellchecking documents created elsewhere, you might want to set this to the keyboard type for that locale. If you are not sure, just leave this as standard

prefix

(dir) prefix directory

set-prefix

(boolean) set the prefix based on executable location (only works on WIN32 and when compiled with --enable-win32-relocatable)

4.2.7 Aspell Utility Options

backup,-b|-x

(boolean) Create a backup file by appending .bak to the file name. This applies when the command is check and the backup file is only created if any spelling modifications take place.

time

(boolean) Time load time and suggest time in pipe mode.

byte-offsets

(boolean) Use byte offsets instead of character offsets in pipe mode.

reverse

(boolean) Reverse the order of the suggestions list in pipe mode.

keymapping

(string) the keymapping to use. Either aspell for the default mapping or ispell to use the same mapping that the Ispell utility uses.

guess

(boolean) make possible root/affix combinations not in the dictionary in pipe mode.

suggest

(boolean) Suggest possible replacements in pipe mode. If false Aspell will simply report the misspelling and make no attempt at suggestions or possible corrections.