From: Kevin Atkinson Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 19:41:26 -0500 (EST) To: aspell-announce@gnu.org, aspell-user@gnu.org, aspell-devel@gnu.org Subject: Aspell Status Update as of March of 2003 I have been rather busy working on my Master Theseus (1) so I have not had a lot of time to work on Aspell. However, I still plan to maintain Aspell for the foreseeable future, just don't expect any new developments in the next couple of months. I also had not had the time to respond to everyones email regarding Aspell, even those offering to help in one way or another. I am grateful to everyone offering help in one way or another, I just haven't found the time to get back to everyone. I hope to get back to everyone soon. ASPELL 0.50 STATUS ASPELL 0.50.3 seams to be pretty stable without any major bug reports except for a few recently submitted reports which I have yet to look into. Thanks to Brian Nelson Aspell 0.50.3 made its way into Debian unstable. Unfortunately Red Hat is still using Aspell 0.33.7 which I would really like to retire. If anyone knows why this is, and/or what can be done to get Red Hat to upgrade, I would appreciate hearing back from you. The guy who use to be working on Aspell, Ted, left so I have no real contacts to Red Hat anymore. ASPELL ON WIN32 Thanks to Thorsten Maerz and others a WIN32 PORT is now available. You can find it at http://aspell.net/win32/. There you can find precompiled binaries with a Full Installing as well as precompiled dictionaries for all of Aspell's official dictionaries. A patch to get Aspell to compile with VC++ is also available. However, it is rather ugly and it is unlikely that all of the changes will make in into an official version of Aspell. Maybe some day when Microsoft releases a standard compliance compiler this will change, but for now those attempting to compile with VC++ will be on their own. MISC NEWS Thanks to Christopher J. Madsen a PATCH FOR ISPELL.EL for improved Aspell support is now available. Ispell.el is the lisp module for (x)emacs to support Ispell and Aspell. This patch will notify aspell of the replacements one makes so it can improve the suggestion list in the future. This is something I have been meaning to do for a while. Hopefully, it will make it into an official version of ispell.el. A COMPLETE MAILING LIST ARCHIVE is now available for all of Aspell's old mailing list. They have been merged into the current mailing list archive as follows: aspell-announce: aspell-announce@lists.sourceforge.net pspell-announce@lists.sourceforge.net aspell-user: aspell@franklin.oit.unc.edu aspell-user@lists.sourceforge.net aspell-help@lists.sourceforge.net pspell-user@lists.sourceforge.net pspell-help@lists.sourceforge.net aspell-devel: pspell-devel@lists.sourceforge.net You can find the archive at http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=aspell. DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS NEXT VERSION OF ASPELL GETTEXT SUPPORT is now in the main CVS branch thanks to Sergey Poznyakoff but needs testing. I personally have not been able to get Aspell to use another local. I really need some people to test out locale support in Aspell and let me know if it is working, and if so help me get it working on my machine. LOADABLE FILTER SUPPORT is now almost done thanks to Christoph Hintermüller. It is currently on the "loadable-branch" in CVS. I hope to merge this to the trunk soon. The integration of Kevin Hendricks AFFIX COMPRESSION CODE is currently halfway done. The code is in pieces in my hard drive. If you would like to help out with Aspell Development this is where you could do the most good. If you are interested and know a decent deal of C++ please contact me at kevina@gnu.org. Thanks to Lutz Horn the manual is partly CONVERTED INTO TEXINFO. The conversion is is no longer as high of a priority as it was since XFroms is now under the LGPL instead of a non-free license like it use to be. Nevertheless, if you would like to finish the job of converting the manual to Texinfo please let me know. FINALLY... I have been considering accepting donations for working on Aspell via a paypal account. At the moment I am a grad student at UMBC with an assistantship of only 5,000 a year. It was 10,000 but it got cut in half due to budget cuts. My financial situation is OK but only because I am currently living at home. With that little money I would have a hard time supporting myself if I had to pay for rent and food. After I get my Masters Theseus I am planning on going onto getting my Ph D. Once I start my Ph. D. work I should be okay (well provided I get a decent assistantship) but that won't be to Fall of 2004. Thus I could really could use any money anyone has to offer. Getting paid for my work on Aspell will give me an incentive to work some more on Aspell. However, due to my Masters Theseus (1) work I only have a limited time I can spare for Aspell even if someone gave me a significant sum of money. Thus I am relevant to accept anyone's money as I can not promise it "Will be put to good use towards the development of Aspell." Furthermore, even though a large part of Aspell's code is my own, other people have put a significant effort into parts of Aspell. So, how should I distribute the money? I will fell guilty accepting it all. Money was never the motivation to develop Aspell, however, receiving some would let me know I am really appreciate and thus give me more motivation to work on Aspell. So I would like some advise if should start accepting donations, and the best way to go about it. If you have some advice on this matter please contact me privately. (1) DistribNet: A Global peer-to-peer internet file system in which anyone can tap into or add content to. http://distribnet.sourceforge.net/ -- http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org _______________________________________________ Aspell-announce mailing list Aspell-announce@gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/aspell-announce