Old Aspell News

September 21, 2019
A pre-release snapshot for GNU Aspell 0.60.8 is now available. More

July 29, 2019
GNU Aspell 0.60.7 is now available. More

July 18, 2019
A pre-release snapshot for GNU Aspell 0.60.8 is now available. More

December 19, 2006
GNU Aspell 0.60.5 is now available. This release improves suggestion results in certain cases and fixes a a number of bugs. More.

January 19, 2006
New Aspell Dictionaries: gu lt uz. More.

October 19, 2005
GNU Aspell 0.60.4 is now available. This is primary a bug fix release. More.

June 28, 2005
GNU Aspell 0.60.3 is now available. This release fixes several bugs involving some of the C API functions, fixes a major bug and improves the speed of the suggestion code, and fixes a number of other bugs. More.

June 2, 2005
New Aspell Dictionaries: csb ga hi hil it mr or pa uz. More.

March 7, 2005
Aspell 0.60 is now in Debian Unstable and should eventually make its way to Testing.

December 27, 2004
New Aspell Dictionaries: am, or, nds More.

December 19, 2004
GNU Aspell 0.60.2 is now available. This release add support for the "munch-list" command and contains several important bug fixes, some of which rendered some non-English languages unusable. More.

November 20, 2004
GNU Aspell 0.60.1.1 is now available. This release contains an important bug fix involving checking of capitalized word when affix compression is used and fixes a number of compile problems. More.

November 15, 2004
New Aspell Dictionaries: fa, de, de-alt. More.

November 7, 2004
GNU Aspell 0.60.1 is now available. This release adds a new Nroff and Texinfo filter and fixes a number a bugs and portability problems. More.

August 13, 2004
Aspell 0.60-pre3 Now Available. More.

August 10, 2004
Aspell English Dictionary Updated. More.

April 19, 2004
In the past couple of months I have put a lot of time in developing Aspell. This comes after over a year of non-development. Without some serious financial support there is a very good chance that Aspell will slip back into non-development mode as was the case for most of 2003. More.

July 31, 2004
Aspell 0.60-pre2 Now Available. More.

July 15, 2004
Aspell 0.60-pre1 Now Available. More.

April 28, 2004
New Aspell Snapshot, Language Package, and mk,vi,yi Dictionaries More.

April 15, 2004
Aspell gd, gv, tn; ga, id, hr, it, sk; he Dictionaries Updated. More.

April 13, 2004
New Aspell Snapshot, includes Unicode Normalization Support. More.

April 6, 2004
Brian Nelson has created some experimental Debian packages for Aspell 0.60.

April 2, 2004
New Aspell Snapshot and Experiential Dictionaries Now Available. More.

March 23, 2004
Language Info Needed. More.

March 18, 2004
Aspell Now Has Full UTF-8 Support. More.

March 29, 2004
New Aspell Dictionaries: ia, mt, nb, nn, sw, tn, tr, wa, and zu. More.

A Visual C++ Build is now available at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/w32/ under the name aspell-0.50.4.1-vc++. Direct all questions about this build to aspell at lavinio.net.

March 23, 2004
Pre Release RPMs now available thanks to Milan Kerslager.

March 14, 2004
Aspell af, bg, cs, fo, hr, id, mi, ms, sk, and sl Dictionaries Updated More.

March 10, 2004
Aspell da, en, ga, gl, is, it, pl, sk, sv, and uk Dictionaries Updated. More.

February 15, 2004
Updated the To Do section to reflect the current status of Aspell.

February 12, 2004
Aspell Status Update

February 11, 2004
Aspell 0.50.5 is now Available. More.

January 24, 2004
Aspell Now Has Affix Compression Support. I have just released another pre Aspell 0.51 snapshot, version 0.51-20040124. This snapshot has several major changed from the previous one. The biggest being support for Affix Compression... More.

October 16, 2003
Aspell 0.50.4.1 is now Available. This release contains a rather important bug fix which was introduced in version 0.50.4.0. More.

October 4, 2003
Aspell 0.50.4 is now Available. More.

April 17, 2003
I have decided to allow wordlist authors to now also maintain the official Aspell Dictionary package for their language. More Info.

March 21, 2003
Aspell Status Update

January 3, 2003
A new version of Aspell's English dictionary is now available. More

December, 21, 2002
Thanks to Christopher J. Madsen a patch for ispell.el for improved Aspell support is now available. This patch will notify aspell of the replacements one makes so it can improve the suggestion list in the future.

November 26, 2002
Thanks to Thorsten Maerz and others a preliminary Windows port is now available.

November 24, 2002
Aspell 0.50.3 is now Available. This release contains several minor yet important bug fixes among other things. More.

September 22, 2002
Aspell Status as of Sep 22

October 12, 2002
I have just upload a new version of the French (fr) dictionary which fixes an important bug. I have also uploaded three new dictionaries for the Welsh (cy), Greek (el) and Ukrainian (uk) languages. More.

October 2, 2002
I have just uploaded a patch which should allow Aspell to compile with VC++. More.

September 28, 2002
GNU Aspell 0.50.2 is now available. This version contains several important bug fixes. Everyone who is is using Aspell 0.50[.1] should upgrade. More. Augest 29, 2002
Because ftp.gnu.org semas to be down I have just uploaded the latest version of aspell to savannah.gnu.org/download/aspell/rel/. You can get it from there for now.

Augest 28, 2002
GNU Aspell 0.50.1 is now available. This version contains a rather large number or portability/compile fixes. More.

Augest 24, 2002
If you get errors in convert.cpp when compiling Aspell please try this patch. If you still have problems please post to aspell-user@gnu.org.

Augest 23, 2002
GNU Aspell 0.50 is now Available. This is the first version of Aspell that is an official GNU Package. It is a combination of the original Aspell and Pspell which should be as least as stable as the original Aspell/Pspell combination. More.

Due to the release of GNU Aspell 0.50 please note the following changes... More.

August 16, 2002
I have just uploaded a new snapshot for GNU Aspell. You can find it at gnu.org/software/aspell/. This is the last snapshot I plan to release before the official release of GNU Aspell 0.50. So, let me know if you have problems with it. I hope to release Aspell 0.50 by the end of next week. More.

Augest 29, 2002
People responsible for maintaining an Aspell package should lookover Changes in GNU Aspell 0.50 important to a Packager.

August 2, 2002
The New Aspell is now an official GNU package! As a result of this all information related to the new Aspell has moved to gnu.org/software/aspell/. The official name of the New Aspell has changed to "GNU Aspell" to reflect the fact that it is a GNU package. More changes are coming once everything gets set up. So stay tuned.

As far as Aspell itself goes, it is now complete enough to function as a replacement for the old Aspell/Pspell with a few exceptions. However, it has not been tested that well at all. So, please test it out. More

July 30, 2002
A new snapshot is now available for the New Aspell. This version has a significant number of bug fixes, TeX and HTML filters, and a draft version of the new manual. The New Aspell is now also a GNU package. Stay tuned.

July 22, 2002
The New Aspell is now complete enough to function as a replacement for the old Aspell/Pspell with a few exceptions. However, the New Aspell is still in a pre-alpha state and has not been tested that well at all. So, only use it if you plan to help in some way with the testing or development of the new Aspell. The main features missing from the old Aspell/Pspell is an HTML and TeX filter. Those should be ported over shortly. More

March 17, 2002
The Aspell home page has been redesigned to be the home page to be the home page of the Aspell, Pspell, and the New Aspell to hopefully make things a lot less confusing to the end user. Aspell.Net will now point to aspell.sourceforge.net. The Pspell mailing list and Bug tracker will also be disabled. All questions regrading the use of the Aspell/Pspell should go to aspell-user at Sourceforge. All discussion on the development of the New Aspell should go to aspell-devel at Savannah and all announcements will go to aspell-announce at Savannah

Well I knew is was going to happen eventually. I officially lost interest in Aspell. This means that there is likely to be little development on Aspell by me. However, I am hoping some other people with a vested interested in Aspell will take over the development of the New Aspell. The current code base for the New Aspell is what I hope to be very clean code and easy to maintain. More.

Aug 8, 2001
Affix compression support for Aspell may be coming in the near future. However, I need your input. More

Aug 2, 2001
Aspell .33.7 is now avaliable. This version fixes a bug which caused Aspell to crash when typo-analysis is not used and contains numerous compile fixes, a few minor bug fixes, and some small enhancements. This will also most likely be the last released version of Aspell since ...

Aspell will be merged into Pspell. More ...

July 19, 2001
Serious Help Needed for Aspell and Pspell. More ...

June 29, 2001
The next release of Aspell dicts is now available. Aspell dicts is an effort to make installing word lists for non-English languages in Aspell straightforward. Full Announcement

June 15, 2001
In an effort to make installing word lists for non-English languages in Aspell straightforward I have decided to release foreign language dictionaries in a standard format. A preliminary version of my efforts are currently available.... Full Announcement

July 22, 2001
A patch to fix several bugs in Aspell .33.6.3 is now available.

June 3, 2001
Aspell .33.6.3 is now available. The only change in this release is a fix to a build problem in the manual/ directory.

Aspell .33.6.2 is now available. The main change in this release is a compile fix so that Aspell will work correctly when not installed in /usr/local.

May 29, 2001
Aspell .33.6.1 is now available. This version mainly contains compile and manual fixes. This included the addition of a configure option to avoid enabling rules which often causes generated build files to be rebuild with the wrong version of Libtool.

May 20, 2001
Two new dictionarys have been added to the alternate dictionaries section. Dutch and Portuguese (European spelling)

May 18, 2001
Aspell .33.6 is now available. Changes include: compile fix on platforms where fileno is defined as a macro, minor bug fix where some words would have random compound tags attached to them, and documentation clarifications/additions.

May 15, 2001
The Aspell Spell Helper is now working again. Sorry it took so long to fix.

April 8, 2001
A Windows binary for Aspell .33.5 is now available.

April 5, 2001
Aspell .33.5 is now available. Changes include: bug fixes and enhancements so it will run under MinGW, major modifications to make Aspell more C++ compliant, a hack so that Aspell will properly compile as a shared library under Solaris, and the addition of a few import missing words to the English word lists.

February 1, 2001
Please note that Aspell .33 requires Pspell .12 in spite of what the README file and the manual says. Sorry about any confusion this may of caused.

January 29, 2001
Aspell .33 is now available. Changes include: a new full screen curses based interface, typo analysis, a reorganized manual that is hopefully easier to follow, an expanded dictionary which includes words found in the original ispell dictionary, and a switch to the multi-language branch of libtool.

November 14, 2000
Aspell's International Plans has been updated.

November 8, 2000
Aspell .32.6 is now available. This is primary a bug fix release.

August 19, 2000
My new email is kevina@users.sourceforge.net, please make a note of it.

Aspell .32.5 is now available, changes include: a "save-repl" option, ability to dump a multi list, an ispell and spell compatibility script, and manual fixes.

August 8, 2000
An RPM for Aspell .32.1 in now available.

August 5, 2000
Aspell .32.1 is now available, this is primary a bug fix release.

A new revision of SCOWL is now available. This version has more sensible upper case word (including proper names) at the default level.

July 29, 2000
An RPM for Aspell .32 is now available.

July 24, 2000
Aspell .32 is now available. Changes include: support for optionally doing without the soundslike data; greatly reduced memory usage when creating word lists; support for ignoring accents when coming up with suggestions; support for local-data-dir which is searched before data-dir; support for specifying which words may be used in compounds and where they may be used; support for having more than one main word list as well as a special ``multi'' word list files which will allow multiple word lists to be treated as one; support for American, British and Canadian spelling with out have to download a separate package; and finally, a completely new word list.

The initial version of SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists), a completely new set of word lists based on various high quality lists available on the net, is now available. Also available: AGID (Automatically Generated Inflection Database), VarCon (Variant Conversion Info), Part Of Speech Database, and Alternate 12 Dicts package. All these are available at http://aspell.sourceforge.net/wl/

June 22, 2000
Aspell-dicts .18 is now available. This version avoids including some American spellings in the British and Canadian word lists amoung other things.

June 18, 2000
Aspell .31.1 is now available. This release should work better with ispell.el 3.3 and fixes a bug when aspell will not create a complete word list on some platforms.

June 17, 2000
FreeBSD binaries for Aspell .31 and Gaspell .30 are now available.

June 13, 2000
Aspell now has a French dictionary.

An RPM for Aspell .31 is now available.

June 11, 2000
Aspell .31 is now available. This version includes support for run-together words, an "ispell -l" mode, and has been updated to work with the latest version of Pspell.

Aspell-dicts .17 is now available. The version now creates the PWLI files needed by Pspell.

May 29, 2000
The Debian binary for Aspell .30.1 is now available and has all the required depdendices available.

May 27, 2000
I updated the Test Results page. It now includes a nice graph as well as a comparison of how aspell does with the new Double Metaphone algorithm, among other things.

May 24, 2000
Added a link to a Swedish word list for Aspell.

May 21, 2000
Lawrence Philips has come up with a new and improved Double Metaphone algorithm. I have set up up a page dedicated to the Metaphone algorithm at http://aspell.sourceforge.net/metaphone/ . This page has links to implementations of both the Original and the Double Metaphone algorithm as well as an explanation of how how it relates to Aspell.

May 8, 2000
The Win32 binary for Aspell .30.1 in now available.

May 7, 2000
Aspell-dict .16.1 is out. The only change in this release is that I added a note on why multiple spellings should not be included.

May 4, 2000
Aspell-dict .16 is out. This version now has support for Canadian spelling, and fixes a misspelling, amount other things.

May 1, 2000
An RPM for Aspell .30.1 is now available.

April 29, 2000
Aspell .30.1 is out. This version has been ported to win32 and has a few bug fixes included one where aspell will ignore the file extension (such as .html or .tex) when checking files.

April 28, 2000
Redesign of the Web Page which included adding links to other dictionary packages and non-linux binaries.


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Copyright (C) 2002 Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org). Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.