NOTICE: Version 2 is in the works. For contributing see
version 2 specification and the folder src/hunspell2.
Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyzer library and program designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding or character encoding. Hunspell interfaces: Ispell-like terminal interface using Curses library, Ispell pipe interface, C++ class and C functions.
Hunspell's code base comes from the OpenOffice.org MySpell (http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/MySpell-3.zip). See README.MYSPELL, AUTHORS.MYSPELL and license.myspell files. Hunspell is designed to eventually replace Myspell in OpenOffice.org.
Main features of Hunspell spell checker and morphological analyzer:
- Unicode support (affix rules work only with the first 65535 Unicode characters)
- Morphological analysis (in custom item and arrangement style) and stemming
- Max. 65535 affix classes and twofold affix stripping (for agglutinative languages, like Azeri, Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, etc.)
- Support complex compoundings (for example, Hungarian and German)
- Support language specific features (for example, special casing of Azeri and Turkish dotted i, or German sharp s)
- Handle conditional affixes, circumfixes, fogemorphemes, forbidden words, pseudoroots and homonyms.
- Free software. Versions 1.x are licenced under LGPL, GPL, MPL tri-license. Version 2 is licenced only under GNU LGPL.
autoreconf -vfi
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
For dictionary development, use the --with-warnings option of configure.
For interactive user interface of Hunspell executable, use the --with-ui option.
The developer packages you need to compile Hunspell's interface:
autoconf automake autopoint libtool g++
Optional developer packages:
- ncurses (need for --with-ui), eg. libncursesw5 for UTF-8
- readline (for fancy input line editing, configure parameter: --with-readline)
- locale and gettext (but you can also use the --with-included-gettext configure parameter)
Download Msys2, update everything and install the following packages:
pacman -S base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-libtool
Open Mingw-w64 Win64 prompt and compile the same way as on Linux, see above.
Download and install Cygwin environment for Windows with the following extra packages:
- make
- automake
- autoconf
- libtool
- gcc-g++ development package
- ncurses, readline (for user interface)
- iconv (character conversion)
Then compile the same way as on Linux. Cygwin builds depend on Cygwin1.dll.
For debugging we need to create a debug build and then we need to start gdb.
make clean
make CXXFLAGS='-g -O0'
libtool --mode=execute gdb src/tools/hunspell
Testing Hunspell (see tests in tests/ subdirectory):
make check
or with Valgrind debugger:
make check
VALGRIND=[Valgrind_tool] make check
For example:
make check
VALGRIND=memcheck make check
features and dictionary format:
man 5 hunspell
man hunspell
hunspell -h
The src/tools directory contains ten executables after compiling:
- affixcompress: dictionary generation from large (millions of words) vocabularies
- analyze: example of spell checking, stemming and morphological analysis
- chmorph: example of automatic morphological generation and conversion
- example: example of spell checking and suggestion
- hunspell: main program for spell checking and others (see manual)
- hunzip: decompressor of hzip format
- hzip: compressor of hzip format
- makealias: alias compression (Hunspell only, not back compatible with MySpell)
- munch: dictionary generation from vocabularies (it needs an affix file, too).
- unmunch: list all recognized words of a MySpell dictionary
- wordforms: word generation (Hunspell version of unmunch)
After compiling and installing (see INSTALL) you can run the Hunspell spell checker (compiled with user interface) with a Hunspell or Myspell dictionary:
hunspell -d en_US text.txt
or without interface:
hunspell
hunspell -d en_UK -l <text.txt
Dictionaries consist of an affix and dictionary file, see tests/ or http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries.
Including in your program:
#include <hunspell.hxx>
Linking with Hunspell static library:
g++ -lhunspell example.cxx
Myspell & Hunspell dictionaries:
- http://extensions.libreoffice.org
- http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries
- http://extensions.openoffice.org
- http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries
Aspell dictionaries (need some conversion):
- ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict
Conversion steps: see relevant feature request at http://hunspell.github.io/ .
László Németh nemeth at numbertext org