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 system's Cream folder.

Special note: Cream's spelling functionality was overhauled at version 0.31beta2 requiring re-downloading and installing the new ones below. If you wish to remove the old dictionaries, just be sure you don't remove the user dictionaries "cream-spell-dict-usr_*.vim" since these personal dictionaries are still valid.

  • English (1.7Mb, v.2.0.2, 2004-09-15) -- Options four dictionary sizes, the largest with a selection of 600,000 words and including words so rare that they might be confused with common mis-spellings. (Example: "ort", a common mis-spelling of "or the" ("ort he"). The three smaller sizes scale well across any speed computer.
  • French (0.9Mb, v.2.1, 2004-09-09) -- Options small, medium, and large dictionary sizes.
  • German (0.9Mb, v.2.0.1, 2004-09-09) -- Options small, medium and large dictionary sizes and includes both Swiss and German dialects.
  • Spanish (1.7Mb, v.3.0, 2004-09-16) -- Includes all four dictionary sizes.
Notes
  • Keep in mind that a larger dictionary size provides more words, but loads more slowly! (The huge English dictionary takes nearly 10 seconds on a P3-450. The next size down is less than half that time.)
  • Selecting larger sizes adds more and rarer words. The most common words are included in the smallest size.
  • All dictionaries option dialect and regional variations where available.
  • Multiple dictionaries may be used together if you desire multi-lingual spell checking.
  • Coinciding with the Cream 0.31beta release, the dictionaries were re-worked. If you had downloaded them previously, please upgrade with these.
  • Please drop us a line if you are interested in seeing a dictionary for your language or dialect. The most difficult task is assembling a good scale of wordlists to create graduated sizes. If you can help us to find good wordlists, we now have the developer tools to create a Cream dictionary very quickly. We'll then ask you to answer a few easy questions about the language and get you to look over our shoulder once or twice.
  • As of Cream 0.31, a new spell check design allows the addition of any language dictionary without having to modify Cream. As long as it conforms to ISO language and country codes, both the language and dialects can be derived from the dictionary name.

For Developers

This section is now obsolete, since all of the spelling dictionary development documentation has been moved into Cream's CVS spelling dictionary module. Please see the README.txt file for a general introduction..

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, sort a file, and do several forms of differentiation between wordlists. Just type dictool.sh at the command line for a brief usage description.

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.

To 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.

Further Sources for Dictionaries and Wordlists