Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 22:37:46 -0500 (EST) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: New Spell Checker For Pine ------------------------------------------ NEW SPELL CHECKER AVAILABLE FOR PINE USERS ------------------------------------------ This BCPL.NET NEWS message will be of interest primarily to those of you who use Pine for reading and writing e-mail and/or Usenet News. If you don't use Pine, you may ignore this message. When you spell check a message in Pine's composer, Pine normally invokes the plain vanilla "spell" program that is standard in almost every version of UNIX. However, recent versions (3.92 and newer) of Pine allow the user to specify a different spell checker if one is installed on the system. Recently we installed "ispell", a popular substitute for "spell". It has many advantages over "spell", but the most important to Pine users are: o It uses a much larger dictionary, so ispell finds fewer "errors" that are actually spelled correctly. o When ispell finds a misspelled word it makes suggestions, just like the spell checkers in most word processing programs. o It creates a personal dictionary file (.ispell_english) in your UNIX home directory. By using ispell's "Insert" command you can add words to your personal dictionary. If you want to try ispell, do the following: o Start Pine o At the Main Menu, press "SC" to open your Pine configuration file. o Press Ctrl-W (Find), type "speller", and press Enter. That should take you to a line that says: speller = o Press "C" (change value), type "/usr/local/bin/ispell", and press Enter. That should change the line to: speller = /usr/local/bin/ispell o Press "E" to exit configuration, and "Y" to save. Now when you spell check a message in the Pine composer, Pine will invoke ispell to do the job. Using it is pretty straightforward, but if you get stuck while using ispell, typing "?" calls up a help screen that explains the commands. ispell can also be used independent of Pine for spell checking plain text files. If you want to use ispell for that purpose, or if you just want a LOT of information about ispell, enter "man ispell" at the shell prompt. Enjoy! Chip -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES CONTACTS: ----------------------------------- Web Site: http://www.bcpl.net Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Domain Name Service Issues: dnsadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091