raspell

An interface binding for the Aspell spelling checker.

License

Copyright 2007-2010 Cloudburst, LLC. Licensed under the GPL 2.0. See included LICENSE file. Portions copyright 2005 Matthias Veit, Biro Eszter and used with permission.

The public certificate for the gem is here.

If you use this software, please make a donation, or recommend Evan at Working with Rails.

Requirements

Raspell requires Aspell version 0.6 (www.aspell.net) and at least one Aspell dictionary.

Mac: 

sudo port install aspell aspell-dict-en

Ubuntu: 

sudo apt-get install aspell libaspell-dev aspell-en

Installation

Mac:

sudo gem install raspell -- --with-opt-dir=/opt/local

Ubuntu:

sudo gem install raspell

Usage

Aspell lets you check words and suggest corrections. For example:

require 'rubygems'
require 'raspell'

speller = Aspell.new("en_US")
speller.suggestion_mode = Aspell::NORMAL

string = "my haert wil go on"

string.gsub(/[\w\']+/) do |word| 
  if !speller.check(word) 
    # word is wrong
    puts "Possible correction for #{word}:"
    puts speller.suggest(word).first
  end
end

This outputs:

Possible correction for haert:
heart
Possible correction for wil:
Will

Note that suggest returns an array of suggestions even for words that are correctly spelled.

Options

The most useful options are suggestion_mode, and the passthrough option ignore_case. Passthrough options have to be set as so:

speller.set_option("ignore-case", "true")

See aspell.net/man-html/The-Options.html for a list of the passthrough options.

Reporting problems

The support forum is here.

Patches and contributions are very welcome. Please note that contributors are required to assign copyright for their additions to Cloudburst, LLC.

Futher resources