Provided by: libhunspell-dev_1.3.2-6ubuntu2.1_amd64 bug

NAME

       hunspell - format of Hunspell dictionaries and affix files

DESCRIPTION

       Hunspell(1)  Hunspell  requires  two  files  to  define  the way a language is being spell
       checked: a dictionary file containing words and applicable flags, and an affix  file  that
       specifies  how  these flags wil controll spell checking.  An optional file is the personal
       dictionary file.

Dictionary file

       A dictionary file (*.dic) contains a list of words, one per line.  The first line  of  the
       dictionaries  (except  personal  dictionaries)  contains  the  approximate word count (for
       optimal hash memory size). Each word may optionally be followed by a slash ("/")  and  one
       or more flags, which represents the word attributes, for example affixes.

       Note: Dictionary words can contain also slashes when escaped like  "" syntax.

Personal dictionary file

       Personal  dictionaries  are  simple  word  lists. Asterisk at the first character position
       signs prohibition.  A second word separated by a slash sets the affixation.

              foo
              Foo/Simpson
              *bar

       In this example, "foo" and "Foo" are personal words, plus  Foo  will  be  recognized  with
       affixes of Simpson (Foo's etc.) and bar is a forbidden word.

Short example

       Dictionary file:

              3
              hello
              try/B
              work/AB

       The flags B and A specify attributes of these words.

       Affix file:

              SET UTF-8
              TRY esianrtolcdugmphbyfvkwzESIANRTOLCDUGMPHBYFVKWZ'

              REP 2
              REP f ph
              REP ph f

              PFX A Y 1
              PFX A 0 re .

              SFX B Y 2
              SFX B 0 ed [^y]
              SFX B y ied y

       In  the  affix  file,  prefix  A  and  suffix B have been defined.  Flag A defines a `re-'
       prefix. Class B defines two `-ed' suffixes. First B suffix can be added to a word  if  the
       last  character of the word isn't `y'.  Second suffix can be added to the words terminated
       with an `y'.

       All accepted words with  this  dictionary  and  affix  combination  are:  "hello",  "try",
       "tried", "work", "worked", "rework", "reworked".

AFFIX FILE GENERAL OPTIONS

       Hunspell source distribution contains more than 80 examples for option usage.

       SET encoding
              Set  character  encoding  of  words  and  morphemes  in affix and dictionary files.
              Possible values: UTF-8, ISO8859-1 - ISO8859-10, ISO8859-13  -  ISO8859-15,  KOI8-R,
              KOI8-U, microsoft-cp1251, ISCII-DEVANAGARI.

              SET UTF-8

       FLAG value
              Set  flag  type.  Default  type  is  the extended ASCII (8-bit) character.  `UTF-8'
              parameter sets UTF-8 encoded Unicode character flags.  The `long'  value  sets  the
              double  extended  ASCII character flag type, the `num' sets the decimal number flag
              type. Decimal flags numbered from 1 to 65000, and in flag fields are  separated  by
              comma.  BUG: UTF-8 flag type doesn't work on ARM platform.

              FLAG long

       COMPLEXPREFIXES
              Set  twofold prefix stripping (but single suffix stripping) eg. for morphologically
              complex languages with right-to-left writing system.

       LANG langcode
              Set language code for language specific functions of Hunspell. Use it  to  activate
              special casing of Azeri (LANG az) and Turkish (LANG tr).

       IGNORE characters
              Sets  characters  to  ignore dictionary words, affixes and input words.  Useful for
              optional characters, as Arabic (harakat) or Hebrew (niqqud) diacritical marks  (see
              tests/ignore.* test dictionary in Hunspell distribution).

       AF number_of_flag_vector_aliases

       AF flag_vector
              Hunspell  can substitute affix flag sets with ordinal numbers in affix rules (alias
              compression, see makealias tool). First example with alias compression:

              3
              hello
              try/1
              work/2

       AF definitions in the affix file:

              AF 2
              AF A
              AF AB

       It is equivalent of the following dic file:

              3
              hello
              try/A
              work/AB

       See also tests/alias* examples of the source distribution.

       Note I: If affix file contains the FLAG parameter, define it before the AF definitions.

       Note II: Use makealias utility in Hunspell distribution to compress aff and dic files.

       AM number_of_morphological_aliases

       AM morphological_fields
              Hunspell can substitute also morphological data with ordinal numbers in affix rules
              (alias compression).  See tests/alias* examples.

AFFIX FILE OPTIONS FOR SUGGESTION

       Suggestion parameters can optimize the default n-gram (similarity search in the dictionary
       words based on the  common  1,  2,  3,  4-character  length  common  character-sequences),
       character  swap and deletion suggestions of Hunspell.  REP is suggested to fix the typical
       and especially bad language specific bugs, because the REP suggestions  have  the  highest
       priority  in  the  suggestion  list.   PHONE is for languages with not pronunciation based
       orthography.

       KEY characters_separated_by_vertical_line_optionally
              Hunspell searches and suggests words with one different  character  replaced  by  a
              neighbor KEY character. Not neighbor characters in KEY string separated by vertical
              line characters.  Suggested KEY parameters for QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts:

              KEY qwertyuiop|asdfghjkl|zxcvbnm
              KEY pyfgcrl|aeouidhtns|qjkxbmwvz

       Using the first QWERTY  layout,  Hunspell  suggests  "nude"  and  "node"  for  "*nide".  A
       character may have more neighbors, too:

              KEY qwertzuop|yxcvbnm|qaw|say|wse|dsx|sy|edr|fdc|dx|rft|gfv|fc|tgz|hgb|gv|zhu|jhn|hb|uji|kjm|jn|iko|lkm

       TRY characters
              Hunspell  can suggest right word forms, when they differ from the bad input word by
              one TRY character. The parameter of TRY is case sensitive.

       NOSUGGEST flag
              Words signed with NOSUGGEST flag are not suggested (but still accepted  when  typed
              correctly). Proposed flag for vulgar and obscene words (see also SUBSTANDARD).

       MAXCPDSUGS num
              Set max. number of suggested compound words generated by compound rules. The number
              of the suggested compound words may be greater from the same  1-character  distance
              type.

       MAXNGRAMSUGS num
              Set  max. number of n-gram suggestions. Value 0 switches off the n-gram suggestions
              (see also MAXDIFF).

       MAXDIFF [0-10]
              Set the similarity factor for the n-gram based suggestions (5 = default value; 0  =
              fewer n-gram suggestions, but min. 1; 10 = MAXNGRAMSUGS n-gram suggestions).

       ONLYMAXDIFF
              Remove all bad n-gram suggestions (default mode keeps one, see MAXDIFF).

       NOSPLITSUGS
              Disable word suggestions with spaces.

       SUGSWITHDOTS
              Add  dot(s)  to  suggestions,  if  input  word  terminates  in  dot(s).   (Not  for
              OpenOffice.org dictionaries, because OpenOffice.org has an automatic dot  expansion
              mechanism.)

       REP number_of_replacement_definitions

       REP what replacement
              This  table  specifies modifications to try first.  First REP is the header of this
              table and one or more REP data line are following it.  With  this  table,  Hunspell
              can  suggest  the  right forms for the typical spelling mistakes when the incorrect
              form differs by more than 1 letter from the right form.  The search string supports
              the  regex  boundary  signs  (^ and $).  For example a possible English replacement
              table definition to handle misspelled consonants:

              REP 5
              REP f ph
              REP ph f
              REP tion$ shun
              REP ^cooccurr co-occurr
              REP ^alot$ a_lot

       Note I: It's very useful  to  define  replacements  for  the  most  typical  one-character
       mistakes,  too:  with  REP  you can add higher priority to a subset of the TRY suggestions
       (suggestion list begins with the REP suggestions).

       Note II: Suggesting separated words, specify spaces with underlines:

              REP 1
              REP onetwothree one_two_three

       Note III: Replacement table can be used for a stricter compound  word  checking  with  the
       option CHECKCOMPOUNDREP.

       MAP number_of_map_definitions

       MAP string_of_related_chars_or_parenthesized_character_sequences
              We  can define language-dependent information on characters and character sequences
              that should be considered related (i.e. nearer than other chars not in the set)  in
              the  affix  file (.aff)  by a map table.  With this table, Hunspell can suggest the
              right forms for words, which incorrectly choose the wrong letter or  letter  groups
              from a related set more than once in a word (see REP).

              For  example  a  possible  mapping  could  be  for the German umlauted ü versus the
              regular u; the word Frühstück really should be written with umlauted  u's  and  not
              regular ones

              MAP 1
              MAP uü

       Use parenthesized groups for character sequences (eg. for composed Unicode characters):

              MAP 3
              MAP ß(ss)  (character sequence)
              MAP fi(fi)  ("fi" compatibility characters for Unicode fi ligature)
              MAP (ọ́)o   (composed Unicode character: ó with bottom dot)

       PHONE number_of_phone_definitions

       PHONE what replacement
              PHONE uses a table-driven phonetic transcription algorithm borrowed from Aspell. It
              is useful for languages with not pronunciation based orthography.  You  can  add  a
              full  alphabet  conversion  and  other  rules  for  conversion  of  special  letter
              sequences.  For  detailed  documentation  see  http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-
              Code.html.    Note:  Multibyte  UTF-8  characters  have  not  worked  with  bracket
              expression yet. Dash expression has signed bytes and not UTF-8 characters yet.

       WARN flag
              This flag is for rare words, wich are also often spelling mistakes, see  option  -r
              of command line Hunspell and FORBIDWARN.

       FORBIDWARN
              Words with flag WARN aren't accepted by the spell checker using this parameter.

OPTIONS FOR COMPOUNDING

       BREAK number_of_break_definitions

       BREAK character_or_character_sequence
              Define  new break points for breaking words and checking word parts separately. Use
              ^ and $ to delete characters at end and start of the word.  Rationale:  useful  for
              compounding  with  joining character or strings (for example, hyphen in English and
              German or hyphen and n-dash in Hungarian). Dashes are often bad  break  points  for
              tokenization,  because  compounds  with  dashes  may contain not valid parts, too.)
              With BREAK, Hunspell can check both side of these compounds, breaking the words  at
              dashes and n-dashes:

              BREAK 2
              BREAK -
              BREAK --    # n-dash

       Breaking are recursive, so foo-bar, bar-foo and foo-foo--bar-bar would be valid compounds.
       Note: The default word break of Hunspell is equivalent of the following BREAK definition:

              BREAK 3
              BREAK -
              BREAK ^-
              BREAK -$

       Hunspell doesn't accept the "-word" and "word-" forms by this BREAK definition:

              BREAK 1
              BREAK -

       Switching off the default values:

              BREAK 0

       Note II: COMPOUNDRULE is better for handling dashes and other  compound joining characters
       or  character  strings. Use BREAK, if you want to check words with dashes or other joining
       characters and there is no time or possibility to describe  precise  compound  rules  with
       COMPOUNDRULE  (COMPOUNDRULE  handles  only  the  suffixation  of  the  last word part of a
       compound word).

       Note III: For command line spell checking of words with extra  characters,  set  WORDCHARS
       parameters: WORDCHARS --- (see tests/break.*) example

       COMPOUNDRULE number_of_compound_definitions

       COMPOUNDRULE compound_pattern
              Define  custom  compound patterns with a regex-like syntax.  The first COMPOUNDRULE
              is a header with the number of the  following  COMPOUNDRULE  definitions.  Compound
              patterns   consist  compound  flags,  parentheses,  star  and  question  mark  meta
              characters. A flag followed by a `*' matches a word sequence of 0 or  more  matches
              of  words  signed with this compound flag.  A flag followed by a `?' matches a word
              sequence of 0 or 1  matches  of  a  word  signed  with  this  compound  flag.   See
              tests/compound*.* examples.

              Note:  en_US  dictionary  of  OpenOffice.org  uses  COMPOUNDRULE for ordinal number
              recognition (1st, 2nd, 11th, 12th, 22nd, 112th, 1000122nd etc.).

              Note II: In the case of long and numerical flag types use only parenthesized flags:
              (1500)*(2000)?

              Note  III:  COMPOUNDRULE  flags  work  completely  separately  from the compounding
              mechanisme using COMPOUNDFLAG, COMPOUNDBEGIN, etc. compound flags. (Use these flags
              on different enhtries for words).

       COMPOUNDMIN num
              Minimum length of words used for compounding.  Default value is 3 letters.

       COMPOUNDFLAG flag
              Words  signed  with COMPOUNDFLAG may be in compound words (except when word shorter
              than COMPOUNDMIN). Affixes with COMPOUNDFLAG also permits  compounding  of  affixed
              words.

       COMPOUNDBEGIN flag
              Words  signed  with COMPOUNDBEGIN (or with a signed affix) may be first elements in
              compound words.

       COMPOUNDLAST flag
              Words signed with COMPOUNDLAST (or with a signed affix) may  be  last  elements  in
              compound words.

       COMPOUNDMIDDLE flag
              Words signed with COMPOUNDMIDDLE (or with a signed affix) may be middle elements in
              compound words.

       ONLYINCOMPOUND flag
              Suffixes signed with ONLYINCOMPOUND flag may be only  inside  of  compounds  (Fuge-
              elements in German, fogemorphemes in Swedish).  ONLYINCOMPOUND flag works also with
              words (see tests/onlyincompound.*).  Note: also valuable to flag compounding  parts
              which are not correct as a word by itself.

       COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG flag
              Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds, suffixes are allowed at the end
              of compounds  by  default.   Affixes  with  COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG  may  be  inside  of
              compounds.

       COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG flag
              Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       COMPOUNDROOT flag
              COMPOUNDROOT flag signs the compounds in the dictionary (Now it is used only in the
              Hungarian language specific code).

       COMPOUNDWORDMAX number
              Set maximum word count in a compound word. (Default is unlimited.)

       CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP
              Forbid word duplication in compounds (e.g. foofoo).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDREP
              Forbid compounding, if the (usually bad) compound word may be a non  compound  word
              with a REP fault. Useful for languages with `compound friendly' orthography.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE
              Forbid upper case characters at word boundaries in compounds.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE
              Forbid compounding, if compound word contains triple repeating letters (e.g. foo|ox
              or xo|oof). Bug: missing multi-byte character support in UTF-8 encoding (works only
              for 7-bit ASCII characters).

       SIMPLIFIEDTRIPLE
              Allow  simplified 2-letter forms of the compounds forbidden by CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE.
              It's useful for  Swedish  and  Norwegian  (and  for  the  old  German  orthography:
              Schiff|fahrt -> Schiffahrt).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN number_of_checkcompoundpattern_definitions

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN endchars[/flag] beginchars[/flag] [replacement]
              Forbid  compounding, if the first word in the compound ends with endchars, and next
              word begins with beginchars and (optionally) they have the  requested  flags.   The
              optional replacement parameter allows simplified compound form.

              The  special  "endchars"  pattern  0 (zero) limits the rule to the unmodified stems
              (stems and stems with zero affixes):

              CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN 0/x /y

       Note: COMPOUNDMIN doesn't work correctly with the compound word  alternation,  so  it  may
       need to set COMPOUNDMIN to lower value.

       FORCEUCASE flag
              Last  word  part  of  a  compound with flag FORCEUCASE forces capitalization of the
              whole compound word. Eg. Dutch word "straat" (street) with  FORCEUCASE  flags  will
              allowed  only  in capitalized compound forms, according to the Dutch spelling rules
              for proper names.

       COMPOUNDSYLLABLE max_syllable vowels
              Need for special compounding rules in Hungarian.  First parameter  is  the  maximum
              syllable  number,  that  may  be in a compound, if words in compounds are more than
              COMPOUNDWORDMAX.   Second  parameter  is  the  list  of  vowels  (for   calculating
              syllables).

       SYLLABLENUM flags
              Need for special compounding rules in Hungarian.

AFFIX FILE OPTIONS FOR AFFIX CREATION

       PFX flag cross_product number

       PFX flag stripping prefix [condition [morphological_fields...]]

       SFX flag cross_product number

       SFX flag stripping suffix [condition [morphological_fields...]]
              An affix is either a prefix or a suffix attached to root words to make other words.
              We can define affix classes with arbitrary number affix rules.  Affix  classes  are
              signed with affix flags. The first line of an affix class definition is the header.
              The fields of an affix class header:

              (0) Option name (PFX or SFX)

              (1) Flag (name of the affix class)

              (2) Cross product (permission to combine prefixes and suffixes).  Possible  values:
              Y (yes) or N (no)

              (3) Line count of the following rules.

              Fields of an affix rules:

              (0) Option name

              (1) Flag

              (2)  stripping characters from beginning (at prefix rules) or end (at suffix rules)
              of the word

              (3) affix (optionally with flags of continuation classes, separated by a slash)

              (4) condition.

              Zero stripping or affix are indicated by zero. Zero condition is indicated by  dot.
              Condition  is  a  simplified,  regular  expression-like  pattern, which must be met
              before the affix can be applied. (Dot signs an arbitrary character.  Characters  in
              braces  sign  an  arbitrary  character  from  the character subset. Dash hasn't got
              special meaning, but circumflex (^) next the  first  brace  sets  the  complementer
              character set.)

              (5) Optional morphological fields separated by spaces or tabulators.

AFFIX FILE OTHER OPTIONS

       CIRCUMFIX flag
              Affixes  signed  with  CIRCUMFIX  flag  may  be on a word when this word also has a
              prefix with CIRCUMFIX flag and vice versa (see circumfix.* test files in the source
              distribution).

       FORBIDDENWORD flag
              This  flag  signs forbidden word form. Because affixed forms are also forbidden, we
              can subtract a subset from set of the accepted affixed and compound  words.   Note:
              usefull to forbid erroneous words, generated by the compounding mechanism.

       FULLSTRIP
              With  FULLSTRIP,  affix  rules  can strip full words, not only one less characters,
              before adding the affixes, see fullstrip.* test files in the source  distribution).
              Note: conditions may be word length without FULLSTRIP, too.

       KEEPCASE flag
              Forbid uppercased and capitalized forms of words signed with KEEPCASE flags. Useful
              for special orthographies (measurements and  currency  often  keep  their  case  in
              uppercased  texts) and writing systems (e.g. keeping lower case of IPA characters).
              Also valuable for words erroneously written in the wrong case.

              Note: With CHECKSHARPS declaration, words with sharp s and  KEEPCASE  flag  may  be
              capitalized  and  uppercased,  but  uppercased forms of these words may not contain
              sharp s, only SS. See germancompounding example  in  the  tests  directory  of  the
              Hunspell distribution.

       ICONV number_of_ICONV_definitions

       ICONV pattern pattern2
              Define  input  conversion  table.   Note:  useful  to  convert one type of quote to
              another one, or change ligature.

       OCONV number_of_OCONV_definitions

       OCONV pattern pattern2
              Define output conversion table.

       LEMMA_PRESENT flag
              Deprecated. Use "st:" field instead of LEMMA_PRESENT.

       NEEDAFFIX flag
              This flag signs virtual stems in the dictionary, words  only  valid  when  affixed.
              Except, if the dictionary word has a homonym or a zero affix.  NEEDAFFIX works also
              with prefixes and prefix + suffix combinations (see tests/pseudoroot5.*).

       PSEUDOROOT flag
              Deprecated. (Former name of the NEEDAFFIX option.)

       SUBSTANDARD flag
              SUBSTANDARD flag signs affix rules and dictionary words (allomorphs)  not  used  in
              morphological  generation  (and  in  suggestion  in  the future versions). See also
              NOSUGGEST.

       WORDCHARS characters
              WORDCHARS extends tokenizer of Hunspell command line interface with additional word
              character. For example, dot, dash, n-dash, numbers, percent sign are word character
              in Hungarian.

       CHECKSHARPS
              SS letter pair in uppercased  (German)  words  may  be  upper  case  sharp  s  (ß).
              Hunspell  can handle this special casing with the CHECKSHARPS declaration (see also
              KEEPCASE flag and tests/germancompounding example) in both spelling and suggestion.

Morphological analysis

       Hunspell's dictionary items and affix rules may have optional space or tabulator separated
       morphological description fields, started with 3-character (two letters and a colon) field
       IDs:

               word/flags po:noun is:nom

       Example: We define a simple resource with morphological informations, a derivative  suffix
       (ds:) and a part of speech category (po:):

       Affix file:

               SFX X Y 1
               SFX X 0 able . ds:able

       Dictionary file:

               drink/X po:verb

       Test file:

               drink
               drinkable

       Test:

               $ analyze test.aff test.dic test.txt
               > drink
               analyze(drink) = po:verb
               stem(drink) = po:verb
               > drinkable
               analyze(drinkable) = po:verb ds:able
               stem(drinkable) = drinkable

       You  can  see  in  the example, that the analyzer concatenates the morphological fields in
       item and arrangement style.

Optional data fields

       Default morphological and other  IDs  (used  in  suggestion,  stemming  and  morphological
       generation):

       ph:    Alternative  transliteration  for  better  suggestion.   It's useful for words with
              foreign pronunciation. (Dictionary based phonetic suggestion.)  For example:

              Marseille ph:maarsayl

       st:    Stem. Optional: default stem is the dictionary item in morphological analysis. Stem
              field  is  useful  for  virtual  stems  (dictionary  words with NEEDAFFIX flag) and
              morphological exceptions instead of new, single used morphological rules.

              feet  st:foot  is:plural
              mice  st:mouse is:plural
              teeth st:tooth is:plural

       Word forms with multiple stems need multiple dictionary items:

              lay po:verb st:lie is:past_2
              lay po:verb is:present
              lay po:noun

       al:    Allomorph(s). A dictionary item is  the  stem  of  its  allomorphs.   Morphological
              generation needs stem, allomorph and affix fields.

              sing al:sang al:sung
              sang st:sing
              sung st:sing

       po:    Part of speech category.

       ds:    Derivational   suffix(es).    Stemming   doesn't   remove   derivational  suffixes.
              Morphological generation depends on the order of the suffix fields.

              In affix rules:

              SFX Y Y 1
              SFX Y 0 ly . ds:ly_adj

       In the dictionary:

              ably st:able ds:ly_adj
              able al:ably

       is:    Inflectional suffix(es).   All  inflectional  suffixes  are  removed  by  stemming.
              Morphological generation depends on the order of the suffix fields.

              feet st:foot is:plural

       ts:    Terminal  suffix(es).   Terminal  suffix  fields  are  inflectional  suffix  fields
              "removed" by additional (not terminal) suffixes.

              Useful for zero morphemes and affixes removed by splitting rules.

              work/D ts:present

              SFX D Y 2
              SFX D   0 ed . is:past_1
              SFX D   0 ed . is:past_2

       Typical example of the terminal suffix is the zero morpheme of the nominative case.

       sp:    Surface prefix. Temporary solution for adding prefixes to the stems  and  generated
              word forms. See tests/morph.* example.

       pa:    Parts of the compound words. Output fields of morphological analysis for stemming.

       dp:    Planned: derivational prefix.

       ip:    Planned: inflectional prefix.

       tp:    Planned: terminal prefix.

Twofold suffix stripping

       Ispell's original algorithm strips only one suffix. Hunspell can strip another one yet (or
       a plus prefix in COMPLEXPREFIXES mode).

       The twofold suffix stripping is a significant improvement in handling of immense number of
       suffixes, that characterize agglutinative languages.

       A second `s' suffix (affix class Y) will be the continuation class of the suffix `able' in
       the following example:

               SFX Y Y 1
               SFX Y 0 s .

               SFX X Y 1
               SFX X 0 able/Y .

       Dictionary file:

               drink/X

       Test file:

               drink
               drinkable
               drinkables

       Test:

               $ hunspell -m -d test <test.txt
               drink st:drink
               drinkable st:drink fl:X
               drinkables st:drink fl:X fl:Y

       Theoretically with the twofold suffix stripping needs only the square root of  the  number
       of  suffix  rules, compared with a Hunspell implementation. In our practice, we could have
       elaborated the Hungarian inflectional morphology with twofold suffix stripping.

Extended affix classes

       Hunspell can handle more than 65000 affix classes.  There are three new syntax for  giving
       flags in affix and dictionary files.

       FLAG long command sets 2-character flags:

                FLAG long
                SFX Y1 Y 1
                SFX Y1 0 s 1

       Dictionary record with the Y1, Z3, F? flags:

                foo/Y1Z3F?

       FLAG num command sets numerical flags separated by comma:

                FLAG num
                SFX 65000 Y 1
                SFX 65000 0 s 1

       Dictionary example:

                foo/65000,12,2756

       The third one is the Unicode character flags.

Homonyms

       Hunspell's dictionary can contain repeating elements that are homonyms:

               work/A    po:verb
               work/B    po:noun

       An affix file:

               SFX A Y 1
               SFX A 0 s . sf:sg3

               SFX B Y 1
               SFX B 0 s . is:plur

       Test file:

               works

       Test:

               $ hunspell -d test -m <testwords
               work st:work po:verb is:sg3
               work st:work po:noun is:plur

       This feature also gives a way to forbid illegal prefix/suffix combinations.

Prefix--suffix dependencies

       An  interesting  side-effect of multi-step stripping is, that the appropriate treatment of
       circumfixes now comes for free.  For instance, in Hungarian, superlatives  are  formed  by
       simultaneous  prefixation of leg- and suffixation of -bb to the adjective base.  A problem
       with the one-level architecture is that there is no way to  render  lexical  licensing  of
       particular  prefixes  and  suffixes  interdependent,  and  therefore  incorrect  forms are
       recognized as valid, i.e. *legvén = leg + vén `old'. Until the introduction of clusters, a
       special  treatment  of  the  superlative had to be hardwired in the earlier HunSpell code.
       This may have been legitimate for a single case, but in  fact  prefix--suffix  dependences
       are  ubiquitous  in  category-changing  derivational  patterns  (cf. English payable, non-
       payable but *non-pay or drinkable, undrinkable but *undrink). In simple words,  here,  the
       prefix  un-  is  legitimate  only  if the base drink is suffixed with -able. If both these
       patters are handled by on-line affix rules and affix rules are checked  against  the  base
       only,  there is no way to express this dependency and the system will necessarily over- or
       undergenerate.

       In next example, suffix class R have got a prefix `continuation' class (class P).

              PFX P Y 1
              PFX P   0 un . [prefix_un]+

              SFX S Y 1
              SFX S   0 s . +PL

              SFX Q Y 1
              SFX Q   0 s . +3SGV

              SFX R Y 1
              SFX R   0 able/PS . +DER_V_ADJ_ABLE

       Dictionary:

              2
              drink/RQ  [verb]
              drink/S   [noun]

       Morphological analysis:

              > drink
              drink[verb]
              drink[noun]
              > drinks
              drink[verb]+3SGV
              drink[noun]+PL
              > drinkable
              drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
              > drinkables
              drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
              > undrinkable
              [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
              > undrinkables
              [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
              > undrink
              Unknown word.
              > undrinks
              Unknown word.

Circumfix

       Conditional affixes implemented by a continuation class are not  enough  for  circumfixes,
       because  a circumfix is one affix in morphology. We also need CIRCUMFIX option for correct
       morphological analysis.

              # circumfixes: ~ obligate prefix/suffix combinations
              # superlative in Hungarian: leg- (prefix) AND -bb (suffix)
              # nagy, nagyobb, legnagyobb, legeslegnagyobb
              # (great, greater, greatest, most greatest)

              CIRCUMFIX X

              PFX A Y 1
              PFX A 0 leg/X .

              PFX B Y 1
              PFX B 0 legesleg/X .

              SFX C Y 3
              SFX C 0 obb . +COMPARATIVE
              SFX C 0 obb/AX . +SUPERLATIVE
              SFX C 0 obb/BX . +SUPERSUPERLATIVE

       Dictionary:

              1
              nagy/C    [MN]

       Analysis:

              > nagy
              nagy[MN]
              > nagyobb
              nagy[MN]+COMPARATIVE
              > legnagyobb
              nagy[MN]+SUPERLATIVE
              > legeslegnagyobb
              nagy[MN]+SUPERSUPERLATIVE

Compounds

       Allowing free compounding yields decrease in precision  of  recognition,  not  to  mention
       stemming  and morphological analysis.  Although lexical switches are introduced to license
       compounding of bases by Ispell, this proves not to be restrictive enough. For example:

              # affix file
              COMPOUNDFLAG X

              2
              foo/X
              bar/X

       With this resource, foobar and barfoo also are accepted words.

       This has been improved upon with  the  introduction  of  direction-sensitive  compounding,
       i.e.,  lexical  features  can  specify  separately whether a base can occur as leftmost or
       rightmost constituent in compounds.  This, however, is still insufficient  to  handle  the
       intricate  patterns  of  compounding, not to mention idiosyncratic (and language specific)
       norms of hyphenation.

       The Hunspell algorithm currently allows any affixed form of  words,  which  are  lexically
       marked  as  potential  members  of  compounds.  Hunspell  improved this, and its recursive
       compound checking rules makes it possible to implement the intricate spelling  conventions
       of   Hungarian   compounds.   For   example,   using   COMPOUNDWORDMAX,  COMPOUNDSYLLABLE,
       COMPOUNDROOT, SYLLABLENUM options can be set the noteworthy Hungarian `6-3' rule.  Further
       example  in  Hungarian,  derivate  suffixes  often modify compounding properties. Hunspell
       allows  the  compounding  flags  on  the  affixes,  and  there  are  two   special   flags
       (COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG  and  (COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG)  to  permit  or prohibit compounding of the
       derivations.

       Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       We also need several Hunspell features for handling German compounding:

              # German compounding

              # set language to handle special casing of German sharp s

              LANG de_DE

              # compound flags

              COMPOUNDBEGIN U
              COMPOUNDMIDDLE V
              COMPOUNDEND W

              # Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds,
              # suffixes are allowed at the end of compounds by default:
              # (prefix)?(root)+(affix)?
              # Affixes with COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG may be inside of compounds.
              COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG P

              # for German fogemorphemes (Fuge-element)
              # Hint: ONLYINCOMPOUND is not required everywhere, but the
              # checking will be a little faster with it.

              ONLYINCOMPOUND X

              # forbid uppercase characters at compound word bounds
              CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE

              # for handling Fuge-elements with dashes (Arbeits-)
              # dash will be a special word

              COMPOUNDMIN 1
              WORDCHARS -

              # compound settings and fogemorpheme for `Arbeit'

              SFX A Y 3
              SFX A 0 s/UPX .
              SFX A 0 s/VPDX .
              SFX A 0 0/WXD .

              SFX B Y 2
              SFX B 0 0/UPX .
              SFX B 0 0/VWXDP .

              # a suffix for `Computer'

              SFX C Y 1
              SFX C 0 n/WD .

              # for forbid exceptions (*Arbeitsnehmer)

              FORBIDDENWORD Z

              # dash prefix for compounds with dash (Arbeits-Computer)

              PFX - Y 1
              PFX - 0 -/P .

              # decapitalizing prefix
              # circumfix for positioning in compounds

              PFX D Y 29
              PFX D A a/PX A
              PFX D Ä ä/PX Ä
               .
               .
              PFX D Y y/PX Y
              PFX D Z z/PX Z

       Example dictionary:

              4
              Arbeit/A-
              Computer/BC-
              -/W
              Arbeitsnehmer/Z

       Accepted compound compound words with the previous resource:

              Computer
              Computern
              Arbeit
              Arbeits-
              Computerarbeit
              Computerarbeits-
              Arbeitscomputer
              Arbeitscomputern
              Computerarbeitscomputer
              Computerarbeitscomputern
              Arbeitscomputerarbeit
              Computerarbeits-Computer
              Computerarbeits-Computern

       Not accepted compoundings:

              computer
              arbeit
              Arbeits
              arbeits
              ComputerArbeit
              ComputerArbeits
              Arbeitcomputer
              ArbeitsComputer
              Computerarbeitcomputer
              ComputerArbeitcomputer
              ComputerArbeitscomputer
              Arbeitscomputerarbeits
              Computerarbeits-computer
              Arbeitsnehmer

       This solution is still not ideal,  however,  and  will  be  replaced  by  a  pattern-based
       compound-checking  algorithm  which  is closely integrated with input buffer tokenization.
       Patterns describing compounds come as a separate input resource that can  refer  to  high-
       level  properties  of  constituent  parts  (e.g. the number of syllables, affix flags, and
       containment of hyphens). The patterns  are  matched  against  potential  segmentations  of
       compounds to assess wellformedness.

Unicode character encoding

       Both  Ispell  and  Myspell use 8-bit ASCII character encoding, which is a major deficiency
       when it comes to scalability.  Although a language like Hungarian  has  a  standard  ASCII
       character  set  (ISO  8859-2),  it  fails  to  allow  a  full  implementation of Hungarian
       orthographic conventions.  For instance, the '--' symbol (n-dash)  is  missing  from  this
       character  set  contrary  to  the  fact that it is not only the official symbol to delimit
       parenthetic clauses in the language, but it can be in compound words as  a  special  'big'
       hyphen.

       MySpell has got some 8-bit encoding tables, but there are languages without standard 8-bit
       encoding, too. For example, a lot of African languages have non-latin  or  extended  latin
       characters.

       Similarly,  using  the original spelling of certain foreign names like Ångström or Molière
       is encouraged by the Hungarian spelling norm, and, since characters 'Å' and  'è'  are  not
       part  of  ISO 8859-2,  when  they  combine  with inflections containing characters only in
       ISO 8859-2 (like elative -ből, allative -től or delative -ről with  double  acute),  these
       result  in  words  (like  Ångströmről  or  Molière-től.) that can not be encoded using any
       single ASCII encoding scheme.

       The problems raised in relation to 8-bit ASCII  encoding  have  long  been  recognized  by
       proponents  of  Unicode. It is clear that trading efficiency for encoding-independence has
       its advantages when it comes a truly multi-lingual application.  There  is  implemented  a
       memory  and  time efficient Unicode handling in Hunspell. In non-UTF-8 character encodings
       Hunspell works with the original 8-bit strings. In UTF-8 encoding, affixes and  words  are
       stored in UTF-8, during the analysis are handled in mostly UTF-8, under condition checking
       and suggestion are converted to UTF-16. Unicode text analysis and spell  checking  have  a
       minimal  (0-20%)  time overhead and minimal or reasonable memory overhead depends from the
       language (its UTF-8 encoding and affixation).

Conversion of aspell dictionaries

       Aspell dictionaries can be easily converted into hunspell. Conversion steps:

       dictionary (xx.cwl -> xx.wl):

       preunzip xx.cwl
       wc -l < xx.wl > xx.dic
       cat xx.wl >> xx.dic

       affix file

       If the affix file exists, copy it:
       cp xx_affix.dat xx.aff
       If not, create it with the suitable character encoding (see xx.dat)
       echo "SET ISO8859-x" > xx.aff
       or
       echo "SET UTF-8" > xx.aff

       It's useful to add a TRY option with the characters of the dictionary with frequency order
       to set edit distance suggestions:
       echo "TRY qwertzuiopasdfghjklyxcvbnmQWERTZUIOPASDFGHJKLYXCVBNM" >>xx.aff

Conversion of aspell dictionaries

       Aspell dictionaries can be easily converted into hunspell. Conversion steps:

       dictionary (xx.cwl -> xx.wl):

       preunzip xx.cwl
       wc -l < xx.wl > xx.dic
       cat xx.wl >> xx.dic

       affix file

       If the affix file exists, copy it:
       cp xx_affix.dat xx.aff
       If not, create it with the suitable character encoding (see xx.dat)
       echo "SET ISO8859-x" > xx.aff
       or
       echo "SET UTF-8" > xx.aff

       It's useful to add a TRY option with the characters of the dictionary with frequency order
       to set edit distance suggestions:
       echo "TRY qwertzuiopasdfghjklyxcvbnmQWERTZUIOPASDFGHJKLYXCVBNM" >>xx.aff

SEE ALSO

       hunspell (1), ispell (1), ispell (4)

                                            2011-02-16                                hunspell(4)