Spell Check

Cream comes with a small default spell check. But for those interested, more complete dictionaries and additional languages are available. Just drop the optional files below into the subdirectory called "spelldicts" found in your Cream folder.

Dictionary Downloads

Select the language(s) to download below. Please read the notes following for important additional information.

  • English (Note: Each package contains all smaller dictionary sizes below it--only download the largest size you need and all others smaller will be available, too.)
    • English, Small (33K) -- Included with default Cream.
    • English, Medium (132K)
    • English, Large (971K)
    • English, eXtra-large (1,734K) -- This dictionary contains a ridiculously large selection of words (600,000), and includes words so rare that they might be confused with common mis-spellings. (Example: "ort", a common mis-spelling of "or the" ("ort he"). It is deathly slow and we don't suggest you use this, but couldn't resist at least making it available. ;)
  • French, Large (775K, 2002-11-30)
  • German, Large (767K, 2002-11-17)
  • Spanish, Large (1,004K, 2002-11-25)
Notes
  • Keep in mind that larger dictionaries load more slowly! (The eXtra-large English dictionary takes nearly 10 seconds on a P3-450. The next size down is less than half that time.)
  • English dictionaries include all options to select dialect and regional variations.
  • Multiple dictionaries may be used together if you desire multi-lingual spell checking.
  • Please drop us a line if you are interested in seeing a dictionary for your language! We now have the developer tools to cook one up fairly quickly. (If we have a good wordlist or the Debian ispell dictionaries are available to convert.) We'll ask you to answer a few easy questions about the language and get you to look over our shoulder once or twice.

For Developers

Interested in creating a dictionary for your language? Read on!

New Tools!

After terrific effort by Wolfgang Hommel, the project now has a set of developer tools for making and processing spell check dictionaries from wordlists. The source code of dictttool.sh and makedict4 are available from Cream CVS. (See CVS Help for more information about CVS.) These tools are quite simple to use if you know anything about the command line or console. Even if you don't and want to try using them to create a dictionary for your language, feel free to write us for assistance.

We can create Cream dictionaries from any valid wordlist. A wordlist is simply a file that has only a single word per line, each which represents a properly spelled word. Unix currently has many dictionaries already in wordlist form (see references below). The two tools provide all the functionality needed to make a dictionary in just a few short commands.

dicttool.sh

This is a Unix script tool (install Cygwin if you're on Windows) to manipulate wordlists. Use it to create a Cream dictionary, convert an existing one back into a wordlist, count the number of words within a file, sort a file, and even create a new file that contains all the words from an existing file not found within a third ("diff").

Usage
dicttool OPTION FILE1 [FILE2...]
Options
create  : dicttool create FILEOUT FILEIN
  (Make a Cream dictionary from a Unix format wordlist)
convert : dicttool convert FILEOUT FILEIN
  (Convert a Cream dictionary back to Unix format wordlist)
count   : dicttool count FILE
  (Count words in a file)
sort    : dicttool sort FILE
  (Alphabetize a file/wordlist by line)
diff    : dicttool diff FILEOUT FILE1 FILE2
  (Create a diff file of words from FILE1 not in FILE2)
makedict4

This C program formats the wordlists into a Cream dictionary. It slices the words into lines and formats them all into correct syntax groups. makedict4 actually parses the wordlist into four distinct parts, each of which is loaded by Cream according to case-sensitivity and multi-word rules. The resultant four files equal one dictionary.

Compile

Compile on the Unix platform with gcc -o makedict makedict.c

On Windows, use the syntax gcc -o makedict.exe makedict.c

Useage
makedict4 MYDICT WORDLIST

Create VIM/Cream dictionary files named MYDICT_1.vim, MYDICT_2.vim, MYDICT_3.vim and MYDICT_4.vim based on the words in WORDLIST. Note that the output file will be appended to if it already exists, not overwritten.

Caveats

The option to create a dictionary from files containing more than a single word per line (such as a typical document) is not available. You must use Cream to manually edit such a file since it is quite difficult to automatically detect whether any given phrase is a word, abbreviation, mathematical expression, slang, foreign word, or even a misspelling.

Contributing

You can contribute specifically to the Cream spell check effort by

  • Submitting a Cream dictionary that you made yourself (creamforvim@mindspring.com).
  • Submitting a wordlist suitable for a dictionary that we'll make for you (and others).

Further Sources of Dictionaries and Wordlists