Re: Help installing aspell on Mac OS X

[Christian Liesen]

Thank you, Bennett and Tomoharu!

I finally got it to work, as follows:

   * I checked that aspell is installed correctly using Bennett's
     suggestion of searching for files hidden by the Mac GUI. Aspell
     was there all right, as were the dictionary files. There are some
     *.alias files, these are important, see below.
   * I noticed that you have to set the language correctly in Lyx's
     Document --> Settings. I also noticed that you have to place the
     cursor in front of the section you wish to be spellchecked.
   * I then used the Lyx --> Preferences --> Language Settings -->
     Spellchecker to tell Lyx what spellchecker executable to use
     (aspell, obviously). However, this alone still did not work even
     if the language was correctly set in both the document settings
     and the preferences. But I discovered that you can use any
     "alternative language" simply by adding the appropriate alias
     name. For example, I entered "swiss" since I have a "swiss.alias"
     in my aspell folder, and the spellchecking followed along the
     Swiss rules. I entered "deutsch" or "british" and got the
     according results. So everything works fine now.

So there's no need for fink now, but I may give a try next time :-).

Cheers,
Christian



Bennett Helm wrote:

On Jun 10, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Christian Liesen wrote:

Hello,
I'm experiencing a problem with installing aspell on Mac OS X 10.4.6.

I followed these instructions by the book: http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/MacSpelling

What happens is that I end up with two aspell folders on my desktop (one with aspell itself labeled "aspell-0.60.4", another one with the desired dictionary labeled "aspell6-en-6.0-0"). These folders contain files that obviously were generated when running the configure-, make- and sudo make installation-processes, since their date is today.

There are no other aspell folders anywhere on my HDD, except for these two.

I reconfigured Lyx 1.4.1, but it does not recognize aspell at all. Instead it says that "Error: The file "/usr/local/lib/aspell-0.60/ngerman" can not be opened for reading. There is no file named "ngerman" anywhere on my computer. What's going on here? Did I miss something?

Most likely, the files have been installed; it's just that they are hidden by the Mac GUI. You can check to see if they're really there by going to the Finder and selecting Go > Go to Folder ..., and then typing in /usr/local/lib to the dialog that pops up. If you don't find an aspell directory there, something went wrong with the installation.

Also, double check to make sure that aspell is selected from within LyX's preferences (LyX > Preferences > Spellchecker > Spellchecker executable).

Note that in what you've described, you've installed aspell6-en-6.0-0 -- an English dictionary. LyX is apparently looking for a German dictionary, which it reports it cannot find. If you're spellchecking German text (i.e., text identified as German within LyX), you'll need to install the appropriate dictionary.

Bennett