Ispell.el Home

Ispell is a fast screen-oriented spelling checker that displays errors in the context of the original file, and suggests possible corrections. Some of the salient features of ispell include its multilingual support and integration with emacs. Ispell contains direct support for files formatted using LaTeX and [nt]roff. The integration into emacs supports additional formats, including hypertext files.

Ispell runs under most versions of UNIX, and ispell.el directly supports GNU emacs and XEmacs. Ispell and emacs have also been ported to some MS WinDoze versions.

Ken Stevens has written and maintained the emacs interface to ispell since 1987. The copyright for ispell.el was released to the Free Software Foundation in 1994 (making it a copyleft :-). The C source retains a Berkeley copyright. Suggestions, contributions, and help in improving this package are always welcome.

This site is the development site for ispell.el, and contains the latest beta releases. Ispell.el will be posted here before before being submitted to the FSF for inclusion with its emacs distributions, and before being included into the standard ispell distributions.

The latest version of ispell.el will always be included in ispell releases; however the last release of ispell source was October 1995. This is the place to go to pick up the latest ispell.el as there is always some lag in the ispell C code release.

See changeLogs for a more complete list of changes for recent version. Here is a brief description of some of the major features added recently:

Version 3.7: Support for user-defined dictionary library location. Improved region selection and parsing, included `po-mode' support. User selection of preference between [ai]spell. Updated `framepop' support.

Version 3.6: Improvement in dictionary menus and selection, minor bug fixes.

Version 3.5: Support MIME message headers - skips encoded regions!

Version 3.5: Allow user to skip saving Fcc messages with large attachments.

Version 3.5: Added Portuguese and Slovakian dictionaries.

Version 3.5: Added support for `aspell'.

Support for OSes that only support synchronous subprocesses (DOS/Windoze).

General region skipping support. This is automatically configured to skip URLs and mail addresses.

The changeLog page shows a synopsis of changes and complete listing of available changelogs.
The following links point to the ispell C source and patches.
The 3.1.20 patch1 fixes the bug in backslashes when spelling latex files in ispell-3.1.20. Newer versions do not need this patch.

Click here to get installation instructions for the ispell patch.

Please forward any comments, suggestions, or bugs in this version to me at ispell-el-bugs@kdstevens.com, or to the ispell.el bug mailing list.

Frequently asked questions about ispell's emacs interface

Recent change logs.

Geoff Kuenning's Ispell home page