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Subsections

2. Getting Started

2.1 Obtaining

The latest version of pspell can always be found at the pspell home page at http://pspell.sourceforge.net/

2.2 Installation

To install the library simply type

./configure
make
make install
Then install at least one pspell module. You can find more information about available modules from the Pspell home page. This is all that should be required for Pspell to function properly.

If you run into problems you can try disabling the building of shared libraries with --disable-shared and/or the ltdl library which is used for dynamically loading pspell modules with --disable-ltdl. If you do so you will then need to manually link in the necessary modules by doing the following:

cd modules
./add-modules
cd ..
make
make install
However this has not been known to work probably on most platforms. If you are just installing Pspell so that you can compile and use the Aspell utility then you should be okay as Aspell does not need any of Pspell modules linked in. However, if you are trying to use Pspell with an application that actually used the Pspell library such as PHP, AbiWord or the like then you will likely run into problems.

2.3 Upgrading from Pspell .11.2

Pspell .12 breaks binary and sourcecode compatibility with Pspell .11. Many of the PspellManager functions now also have a length parameter specifying the length of the word. A length of -1 means that the string is null terminated. This unfortunately breaks source code compatibility. To upgrade to Pspell .12 either define the variable USE_ORIGINAL_MANAGER_FUNCS before pspell.h in included or simply add a length of -1 after each word passed in. Please see manager.h for the exact phototype of the functions. Defining the variable USE_ORIGINAL_MANAGER_FUNCS will allow your code to work with both Pspell .11 and .12.

2.4 Helping Out

Right now the area I need the most help in is better shared library support and on the ispell module. If you are interested in helping out please contact me at kevina@users.sourceforge.net.

If you wish to work on Pspell you will need the multi-language-branch of the CVS version of libtool. You will also need autoconf and automake. The released version of autoconf has a small bug in it which will cause it to think ``.C'' is the extension of executables. To fix this you need to apply the patch ``autoconf-exeext.patch'' which can be found in the pspell distribution.


next up previous contents
Next: 3. Library Interface Up: Portable Spell Checker Interface Previous: 1. Introduction   Contents
Kevin Atkinson 2001-01-28