I received the following comment from the upstream author. I haven't decided yet what to do about this, but will do so soon. If you have further comments, please send them to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks.
> Torsten's suggestion of screwing backwards compatibility is not > acceptable. The real bug is in glibc, not in ispell. Glibc has > failed to properly support backwards compatibility with termio. Until > glibc is fixed, the suggested patch is the preferred solution.