1*spell.txt* For Vim version 8.1. Last change: 2019 May 05 2 3 4 VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar 5 6 7Spell checking *spell* 8 91. Quick start |spell-quickstart| 102. Remarks on spell checking |spell-remarks| 113. Generating a spell file |spell-mkspell| 124. Spell file format |spell-file-format| 13 14{not available when the |+syntax| feature has been disabled at compile time} 15 16Note: There also is a vimspell plugin. If you have it you can do ":help 17vimspell" to find about it. But you will probably want to get rid of the 18plugin and use the 'spell' option instead, it works better. 19 20============================================================================== 211. Quick start *spell-quickstart* *E756* 22 23This command switches on spell checking: > 24 25 :setlocal spell spelllang=en_us 26 27This switches on the 'spell' option and specifies to check for US English. 28 29The words that are not recognized are highlighted with one of these: 30 SpellBad word not recognized |hl-SpellBad| 31 SpellCap word not capitalised |hl-SpellCap| 32 SpellRare rare word |hl-SpellRare| 33 SpellLocal wrong spelling for selected region |hl-SpellLocal| 34 35Vim only checks words for spelling, there is no grammar check. 36 37If the 'mousemodel' option is set to "popup" and the cursor is on a badly 38spelled word or it is "popup_setpos" and the mouse pointer is on a badly 39spelled word, then the popup menu will contain a submenu to replace the bad 40word. Note: this slows down the appearance of the popup menu. Note for GTK: 41don't release the right mouse button until the menu appears, otherwise it 42won't work. 43 44To search for the next misspelled word: 45 46 *]s* 47]s Move to next misspelled word after the cursor. 48 A count before the command can be used to repeat. 49 'wrapscan' applies. 50 51 *[s* 52[s Like "]s" but search backwards, find the misspelled 53 word before the cursor. Doesn't recognize words 54 split over two lines, thus may stop at words that are 55 not highlighted as bad. Does not stop at word with 56 missing capital at the start of a line. 57 58 *]S* 59]S Like "]s" but only stop at bad words, not at rare 60 words or words for another region. 61 62 *[S* 63[S Like "]S" but search backwards. 64 65 66To add words to your own word list: 67 68 *zg* 69zg Add word under the cursor as a good word to the first 70 name in 'spellfile'. A count may precede the command 71 to indicate the entry in 'spellfile' to be used. A 72 count of two uses the second entry. 73 74 In Visual mode the selected characters are added as a 75 word (including white space!). 76 When the cursor is on text that is marked as badly 77 spelled then the marked text is used. 78 Otherwise the word under the cursor, separated by 79 non-word characters, is used. 80 81 If the word is explicitly marked as bad word in 82 another spell file the result is unpredictable. 83 84 *zG* 85zG Like "zg" but add the word to the internal word list 86 |internal-wordlist|. 87 88 *zw* 89zw Like "zg" but mark the word as a wrong (bad) word. 90 If the word already appears in 'spellfile' it is 91 turned into a comment line. See |spellfile-cleanup| 92 for getting rid of those. 93 94 *zW* 95zW Like "zw" but add the word to the internal word list 96 |internal-wordlist|. 97 98zuw *zug* *zuw* 99zug Undo |zw| and |zg|, remove the word from the entry in 100 'spellfile'. Count used as with |zg|. 101 102zuW *zuG* *zuW* 103zuG Undo |zW| and |zG|, remove the word from the internal 104 word list. Count used as with |zg|. 105 106 *:spe* *:spellgood* 107:[count]spe[llgood] {word} 108 Add {word} as a good word to 'spellfile', like with 109 |zg|. Without count the first name is used, with a 110 count of two the second entry, etc. 111 112:spe[llgood]! {word} Add {word} as a good word to the internal word list, 113 like with |zG|. 114 115 *:spellw* *:spellwrong* 116:[count]spellw[rong] {word} 117 Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to 'spellfile', as 118 with |zw|. Without count the first name is used, with 119 a count of two the second entry, etc. 120 121:spellw[rong]! {word} Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to the internal word 122 list, like with |zW|. 123 124:[count]spellu[ndo] {word} *:spellu* *:spellundo* 125 Like |zuw|. [count] used as with |:spellgood|. 126 127:spellu[ndo]! {word} Like |zuW|. [count] used as with |:spellgood|. 128 129 130After adding a word to 'spellfile' with the above commands its associated 131".spl" file will automatically be updated and reloaded. If you change 132'spellfile' manually you need to use the |:mkspell| command. This sequence of 133commands mostly works well: > 134 :edit <file in 'spellfile'> 135< (make changes to the spell file) > 136 :mkspell! % 137 138More details about the 'spellfile' format below |spell-wordlist-format|. 139 140 *internal-wordlist* 141The internal word list is used for all buffers where 'spell' is set. It is 142not stored, it is lost when you exit Vim. It is also cleared when 'encoding' 143is set. 144 145 146Finding suggestions for bad words: 147 *z=* 148z= For the word under/after the cursor suggest correctly 149 spelled words. This also works to find alternatives 150 for a word that is not highlighted as a bad word, 151 e.g., when the word after it is bad. 152 In Visual mode the highlighted text is taken as the 153 word to be replaced. 154 The results are sorted on similarity to the word being 155 replaced. 156 This may take a long time. Hit CTRL-C when you get 157 bored. 158 159 If the command is used without a count the 160 alternatives are listed and you can enter the number 161 of your choice or press <Enter> if you don't want to 162 replace. You can also use the mouse to click on your 163 choice (only works if the mouse can be used in Normal 164 mode and when there are no line wraps). Click on the 165 first line (the header) to cancel. 166 167 The suggestions listed normally replace a highlighted 168 bad word. Sometimes they include other text, in that 169 case the replaced text is also listed after a "<". 170 171 If a count is used that suggestion is used, without 172 prompting. For example, "1z=" always takes the first 173 suggestion. 174 175 If 'verbose' is non-zero a score will be displayed 176 with the suggestions to indicate the likeliness to the 177 badly spelled word (the higher the score the more 178 different). 179 When a word was replaced the redo command "." will 180 repeat the word replacement. This works like "ciw", 181 the good word and <Esc>. This does NOT work for Thai 182 and other languages without spaces between words. 183 184 *:spellr* *:spellrepall* *E752* *E753* 185:spellr[epall] Repeat the replacement done by |z=| for all matches 186 with the replaced word in the current window. 187 188In Insert mode, when the cursor is after a badly spelled word, you can use 189CTRL-X s to find suggestions. This works like Insert mode completion. Use 190CTRL-N to use the next suggestion, CTRL-P to go back. |i_CTRL-X_s| 191 192The 'spellsuggest' option influences how the list of suggestions is generated 193and sorted. See |'spellsuggest'|. 194 195The 'spellcapcheck' option is used to check the first word of a sentence 196starts with a capital. This doesn't work for the first word in the file. 197When there is a line break right after a sentence the highlighting of the next 198line may be postponed. Use |CTRL-L| when needed. Also see |set-spc-auto| for 199how it can be set automatically when 'spelllang' is set. 200 201Vim counts the number of times a good word is encountered. This is used to 202sort the suggestions: words that have been seen before get a small bonus, 203words that have been seen often get a bigger bonus. The COMMON item in the 204affix file can be used to define common words, so that this mechanism also 205works in a new or short file |spell-COMMON|. 206 207============================================================================== 2082. Remarks on spell checking *spell-remarks* 209 210PERFORMANCE 211 212Vim does on-the-fly spell checking. To make this work fast the word list is 213loaded in memory. Thus this uses a lot of memory (1 Mbyte or more). There 214might also be a noticeable delay when the word list is loaded, which happens 215when 'spell' is set and when 'spelllang' is set while 'spell' was already set. 216To minimize the delay each word list is only loaded once, it is not deleted 217when 'spelllang' is made empty or 'spell' is reset. When 'encoding' is set 218all the word lists are reloaded, thus you may notice a delay then too. 219 220 221REGIONS 222 223A word may be spelled differently in various regions. For example, English 224comes in (at least) these variants: 225 226 en all regions 227 en_au Australia 228 en_ca Canada 229 en_gb Great Britain 230 en_nz New Zealand 231 en_us USA 232 233Words that are not used in one region but are used in another region are 234highlighted with SpellLocal |hl-SpellLocal|. 235 236Always use lowercase letters for the language and region names. 237 238When adding a word with |zg| or another command it's always added for all 239regions. You can change that by manually editing the 'spellfile'. See 240|spell-wordlist-format|. Note that the regions as specified in the files in 241'spellfile' are only used when all entries in 'spelllang' specify the same 242region (not counting files specified by their .spl name). 243 244 *spell-german* 245Specific exception: For German these special regions are used: 246 de all German words accepted 247 de_de old and new spelling 248 de_19 old spelling 249 de_20 new spelling 250 de_at Austria 251 de_ch Switzerland 252 253 *spell-russian* 254Specific exception: For Russian these special regions are used: 255 ru all Russian words accepted 256 ru_ru "IE" letter spelling 257 ru_yo "YO" letter spelling 258 259 *spell-yiddish* 260Yiddish requires using "utf-8" encoding, because of the special characters 261used. If you are using latin1 Vim will use transliterated (romanized) Yiddish 262instead. If you want to use transliterated Yiddish with utf-8 use "yi-tr". 263In a table: 264 'encoding' 'spelllang' 265 utf-8 yi Yiddish 266 latin1 yi transliterated Yiddish 267 utf-8 yi-tr transliterated Yiddish 268 269 *spell-cjk* 270Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian characters are normally marked as 271errors, because spell checking of these characters is not supported. If 272'spelllang' includes "cjk", these characters are not marked as errors. This 273is useful when editing text with spell checking while some Asian words are 274present. 275 276 277SPELL FILES *spell-load* 278 279Vim searches for spell files in the "spell" subdirectory of the directories in 280'runtimepath'. The name is: LL.EEE.spl, where: 281 LL the language name 282 EEE the value of 'encoding' 283 284The value for "LL" comes from 'spelllang', but excludes the region name. 285Examples: 286 'spelllang' LL ~ 287 en_us en 288 en-rare en-rare 289 medical_ca medical 290 291Only the first file is loaded, the one that is first in 'runtimepath'. If 292this succeeds then additionally files with the name LL.EEE.add.spl are loaded. 293All the ones that are found are used. 294 295If no spell file is found the |SpellFileMissing| autocommand event is 296triggered. This may trigger the |spellfile.vim| plugin to offer you 297downloading the spell file. 298 299Additionally, the files related to the names in 'spellfile' are loaded. These 300are the files that |zg| and |zw| add good and wrong words to. 301 302Exceptions: 303- Vim uses "latin1" when 'encoding' is "iso-8859-15". The euro sign doesn't 304 matter for spelling. 305- When no spell file for 'encoding' is found "ascii" is tried. This only 306 works for languages where nearly all words are ASCII, such as English. It 307 helps when 'encoding' is not "latin1", such as iso-8859-2, and English text 308 is being edited. For the ".add" files the same name as the found main 309 spell file is used. 310 311For example, with these values: 312 'runtimepath' is "~/.vim,/usr/share/vim81,~/.vim/after" 313 'encoding' is "iso-8859-2" 314 'spelllang' is "pl" 315 316Vim will look for: 3171. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl 3182. /usr/share/vim81/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl 3193. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl 3204. /usr/share/vim81/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl 3215. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl 322 323This assumes 1. is not found and 2. is found. 324 325If 'encoding' is "latin1" Vim will look for: 3261. ~/.vim/spell/pl.latin1.spl 3272. /usr/share/vim81/spell/pl.latin1.spl 3283. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.latin1.spl 3294. ~/.vim/spell/pl.ascii.spl 3305. /usr/share/vim81/spell/pl.ascii.spl 3316. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.ascii.spl 332 333This assumes none of them are found (Polish doesn't make sense when leaving 334out the non-ASCII characters). 335 336Spelling for EBCDIC is currently not supported. 337 338A spell file might not be available in the current 'encoding'. See 339|spell-mkspell| about how to create a spell file. Converting a spell file 340with "iconv" will NOT work! 341 342Note: on VMS ".{enc}.spl" is changed to "_{enc}.spl" to avoid trouble with 343filenames. 344 345 *spell-sug-file* *E781* 346If there is a file with exactly the same name as the ".spl" file but ending in 347".sug", that file will be used for giving better suggestions. It isn't loaded 348before suggestions are made to reduce memory use. 349 350 *E758* *E759* *E778* *E779* *E780* *E782* 351When loading a spell file Vim checks that it is properly formatted. If you 352get an error the file may be truncated, modified or intended for another Vim 353version. 354 355 356SPELLFILE CLEANUP *spellfile-cleanup* 357 358The |zw| command turns existing entries in 'spellfile' into comment lines. 359This avoids having to write a new file every time, but results in the file 360only getting longer, never shorter. To clean up the comment lines in all 361".add" spell files do this: > 362 :runtime spell/cleanadd.vim 363 364This deletes all comment lines, except the ones that start with "##". Use 365"##" lines to add comments that you want to keep. 366 367You can invoke this script as often as you like. A variable is provided to 368skip updating files that have been changed recently. Set it to the number of 369seconds that has passed since a file was changed before it will be cleaned. 370For example, to clean only files that were not changed in the last hour: > 371 let g:spell_clean_limit = 60 * 60 372The default is one second. 373 374 375WORDS 376 377Vim uses a fixed method to recognize a word. This is independent of 378'iskeyword', so that it also works in help files and for languages that 379include characters like '-' in 'iskeyword'. The word characters do depend on 380'encoding'. 381 382The table with word characters is stored in the main .spl file. Therefore it 383matters what the current locale is when generating it! A .add.spl file does 384not contain a word table though. 385 386For a word that starts with a digit the digit is ignored, unless the word as a 387whole is recognized. Thus if "3D" is a word and "D" is not then "3D" is 388recognized as a word, but if "3D" is not a word then only the "D" is marked as 389bad. Hex numbers in the form 0x12ab and 0X12AB are recognized. 390 391 392WORD COMBINATIONS 393 394It is possible to spell-check words that include a space. This is used to 395recognize words that are invalid when used by themselves, e.g. for "et al.". 396It can also be used to recognize "the the" and highlight it. 397 398The number of spaces is irrelevant. In most cases a line break may also 399appear. However, this makes it difficult to find out where to start checking 400for spelling mistakes. When you make a change to one line and only that line 401is redrawn Vim won't look in the previous line, thus when "et" is at the end 402of the previous line "al." will be flagged as an error. And when you type 403"the<CR>the" the highlighting doesn't appear until the first line is redrawn. 404Use |CTRL-L| to redraw right away. "[s" will also stop at a word combination 405with a line break. 406 407When encountering a line break Vim skips characters such as '*', '>' and '"', 408so that comments in C, shell and Vim code can be spell checked. 409 410 411SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING *spell-syntax* 412 413Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be 414done: 415 4161. everywhere default 4172. in specific items use "contains=@Spell" 4183. everywhere but specific items use "contains=@NoSpell" 419 420For the second method adding the @NoSpell cluster will disable spell checking 421again. This can be used, for example, to add @Spell to the comments of a 422program, and add @NoSpell for items that shouldn't be checked. 423Also see |:syn-spell| for text that is not in a syntax item. 424 425 426VIM SCRIPTS 427 428If you want to write a Vim script that does something with spelling, you may 429find these functions useful: 430 431 spellbadword() find badly spelled word at the cursor 432 spellsuggest() get list of spelling suggestions 433 soundfold() get the sound-a-like version of a word 434 435 436SETTING 'spellcapcheck' AUTOMATICALLY *set-spc-auto* 437 438After the 'spelllang' option has been set successfully, Vim will source the 439files "spell/LANG.vim" in 'runtimepath'. "LANG" is the value of 'spelllang' 440up to the first comma, dot or underscore. This can be used to set options 441specifically for the language, especially 'spellcapcheck'. 442 443The distribution includes a few of these files. Use this command to see what 444they do: > 445 :next $VIMRUNTIME/spell/*.vim 446 447Note that the default scripts don't set 'spellcapcheck' if it was changed from 448the default value. This assumes the user prefers another value then. 449 450 451DOUBLE SCORING *spell-double-scoring* 452 453The 'spellsuggest' option can be used to select "double" scoring. This 454mechanism is based on the principle that there are two kinds of spelling 455mistakes: 456 4571. You know how to spell the word, but mistype something. This results in a 458 small editing distance (character swapped/omitted/inserted) and possibly a 459 word that sounds completely different. 460 4612. You don't know how to spell the word and type something that sounds right. 462 The edit distance can be big but the word is similar after sound-folding. 463 464Since scores for these two mistakes will be very different we use a list 465for each and mix them. 466 467The sound-folding is slow and people that know the language won't make the 468second kind of mistakes. Therefore 'spellsuggest' can be set to select the 469preferred method for scoring the suggestions. 470 471============================================================================== 4723. Generating a spell file *spell-mkspell* 473 474Vim uses a binary file format for spelling. This greatly speeds up loading 475the word list and keeps it small. 476 *.aff* *.dic* *Myspell* 477You can create a Vim spell file from the .aff and .dic files that Myspell 478uses. Myspell is used by OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. The OpenOffice .oxt 479files are zip files which contain the .aff and .dic files. You should be able 480to find them here: 481 http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/dictionary 482The older, OpenOffice 2 files may be used if this doesn't work: 483 http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries 484You can also use a plain word list. The results are the same, the choice 485depends on what word lists you can find. 486 487If you install Aap (from www.a-a-p.org) you can use the recipes in the 488runtime/spell/??/ directories. Aap will take care of downloading the files, 489apply patches needed for Vim and build the .spl file. 490 491Make sure your current locale is set properly, otherwise Vim doesn't know what 492characters are upper/lower case letters. If the locale isn't available (e.g., 493when using an MS-Windows codepage on Unix) add tables to the .aff file 494|spell-affix-chars|. If the .aff file doesn't define a table then the word 495table of the currently active spelling is used. If spelling is not active 496then Vim will try to guess. 497 498 *:mksp* *:mkspell* 499:mksp[ell][!] [-ascii] {outname} {inname} ... 500 Generate a Vim spell file from word lists. Example: > 501 :mkspell /tmp/nl nl_NL.words 502< *E751* 503 When {outname} ends in ".spl" it is used as the output 504 file name. Otherwise it should be a language name, 505 such as "en", without the region name. The file 506 written will be "{outname}.{encoding}.spl", where 507 {encoding} is the value of the 'encoding' option. 508 509 When the output file already exists [!] must be used 510 to overwrite it. 511 512 When the [-ascii] argument is present, words with 513 non-ascii characters are skipped. The resulting file 514 ends in "ascii.spl". 515 516 The input can be the Myspell format files {inname}.aff 517 and {inname}.dic. If {inname}.aff does not exist then 518 {inname} is used as the file name of a plain word 519 list. 520 521 Multiple {inname} arguments can be given to combine 522 regions into one Vim spell file. Example: > 523 :mkspell ~/.vim/spell/en /tmp/en_US /tmp/en_CA /tmp/en_AU 524< This combines the English word lists for US, CA and AU 525 into one en.spl file. 526 Up to eight regions can be combined. *E754* *E755* 527 The REP and SAL items of the first .aff file where 528 they appear are used. |spell-REP| |spell-SAL| 529 *E845* 530 This command uses a lot of memory, required to find 531 the optimal word tree (Polish, Italian and Hungarian 532 require several hundred Mbyte). The final result will 533 be much smaller, because compression is used. To 534 avoid running out of memory compression will be done 535 now and then. This can be tuned with the 'mkspellmem' 536 option. 537 538 After the spell file was written and it was being used 539 in a buffer it will be reloaded automatically. 540 541:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}.{enc}.add 542 Like ":mkspell" above, using {name}.{enc}.add as the 543 input file and producing an output file in the same 544 directory that has ".spl" appended. 545 546:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name} 547 Like ":mkspell" above, using {name} as the input file 548 and producing an output file in the same directory 549 that has ".{enc}.spl" appended. 550 551Vim will report the number of duplicate words. This might be a mistake in the 552list of words. But sometimes it is used to have different prefixes and 553suffixes for the same basic word to avoid them combining (e.g. Czech uses 554this). If you want Vim to report all duplicate words set the 'verbose' 555option. 556 557Since you might want to change a Myspell word list for use with Vim the 558following procedure is recommended: 559 5601. Obtain the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files from Myspell. 5612. Make a copy of these files to xx_YY.orig.aff and xx_YY.orig.dic. 5623. Change the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files to remove bad words, add missing 563 words, define word characters with FOL/LOW/UPP, etc. The distributed 564 "*.diff" files can be used. 5654. Start Vim with the right locale and use |:mkspell| to generate the Vim 566 spell file. 5675. Try out the spell file with ":set spell spelllang=xx" if you wrote it in 568 a spell directory in 'runtimepath', or ":set spelllang=xx.enc.spl" if you 569 wrote it somewhere else. 570 571When the Myspell files are updated you can merge the differences: 5721. Obtain the new Myspell files as xx_YY.new.aff and xx_UU.new.dic. 5732. Use Vimdiff to see what changed: > 574 vimdiff xx_YY.orig.dic xx_YY.new.dic 5753. Take over the changes you like in xx_YY.dic. 576 You may also need to change xx_YY.aff. 5774. Rename xx_YY.new.dic to xx_YY.orig.dic and xx_YY.new.aff to xx_YY.orig.aff. 578 579 580SPELL FILE VERSIONS *E770* *E771* *E772* 581 582Spell checking is a relatively new feature in Vim, thus it's possible that the 583.spl file format will be changed to support more languages. Vim will check 584the validity of the spell file and report anything wrong. 585 586 E771: Old spell file, needs to be updated ~ 587This spell file is older than your Vim. You need to update the .spl file. 588 589 E772: Spell file is for newer version of Vim ~ 590This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim. You need to 591update Vim. 592 593 E770: Unsupported section in spell file ~ 594This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim and contains a 595section that is required for the spell file to work. In this case it's 596probably a good idea to upgrade your Vim. 597 598 599SPELL FILE DUMP 600 601If for some reason you want to check what words are supported by the currently 602used spelling files, use this command: 603 604 *:spelldump* *:spelld* 605:spelld[ump] Open a new window and fill it with all currently valid 606 words. Compound words are not included. 607 Note: For some languages the result may be enormous, 608 causing Vim to run out of memory. 609 610:spelld[ump]! Like ":spelldump" and include the word count. This is 611 the number of times the word was found while 612 updating the screen. Words that are in COMMON items 613 get a starting count of 10. 614 615The format of the word list is used |spell-wordlist-format|. You should be 616able to read it with ":mkspell" to generate one .spl file that includes all 617the words. 618 619When all entries to 'spelllang' use the same regions or no regions at all then 620the region information is included in the dumped words. Otherwise only words 621for the current region are included and no "/regions" line is generated. 622 623Comment lines with the name of the .spl file are used as a header above the 624words that were generated from that .spl file. 625 626 627SPELL FILE MISSING *spell-SpellFileMissing* *spellfile.vim* 628 629If the spell file for the language you are using is not available, you will 630get an error message. But if the "spellfile.vim" plugin is active it will 631offer you to download the spell file. Just follow the instructions, it will 632ask you where to write the file (there must be a writable directory in 633'runtimepath' for this). 634 635The plugin has a default place where to look for spell files, on the Vim ftp 636server. If you want to use another location or another protocol, set the 637g:spellfile_URL variable to the directory that holds the spell files. The 638|netrw| plugin is used for getting the file, look there for the specific 639syntax of the URL. Example: > 640 let g:spellfile_URL = 'http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/spell' 641You may need to escape special characters. 642 643The plugin will only ask about downloading a language once. If you want to 644try again anyway restart Vim, or set g:spellfile_URL to another value (e.g., 645prepend a space). 646 647To avoid using the "spellfile.vim" plugin do this in your vimrc file: > 648 649 let loaded_spellfile_plugin = 1 650 651Instead of using the plugin you can define a |SpellFileMissing| autocommand to 652handle the missing file yourself. You can use it like this: > 653 654 :au SpellFileMissing * call Download_spell_file(expand('<amatch>')) 655 656Thus the <amatch> item contains the name of the language. Another important 657value is 'encoding', since every encoding has its own spell file. With two 658exceptions: 659- For ISO-8859-15 (latin9) the name "latin1" is used (the encodings only 660 differ in characters not used in dictionary words). 661- The name "ascii" may also be used for some languages where the words use 662 only ASCII letters for most of the words. 663 664The default "spellfile.vim" plugin uses this autocommand, if you define your 665autocommand afterwards you may want to use ":au! SpellFileMissing" to overrule 666it. If you define your autocommand before the plugin is loaded it will notice 667this and not do anything. 668 *E797* 669Note that the SpellFileMissing autocommand must not change or destroy the 670buffer the user was editing. 671 672============================================================================== 6734. Spell file format *spell-file-format* 674 675This is the format of the files that are used by the person who creates and 676maintains a word list. 677 678Note that we avoid the word "dictionary" here. That is because the goal of 679spell checking differs from writing a dictionary (as in the book). For 680spelling we need a list of words that are OK, thus should not be highlighted. 681Person and company names will not appear in a dictionary, but do appear in a 682word list. And some old words are rarely used while they are common 683misspellings. These do appear in a dictionary but not in a word list. 684 685There are two formats: A straight list of words and a list using affix 686compression. The files with affix compression are used by Myspell (Mozilla 687and OpenOffice.org). This requires two files, one with .aff and one with .dic 688extension. 689 690 691FORMAT OF STRAIGHT WORD LIST *spell-wordlist-format* 692 693The words must appear one per line. That is all that is required. 694 695Additionally the following items are recognized: 696 697- Empty and blank lines are ignored. 698 699 # comment ~ 700- Lines starting with a # are ignored (comment lines). 701 702 /encoding=utf-8 ~ 703- A line starting with "/encoding=", before any word, specifies the encoding 704 of the file. After the second '=' comes an encoding name. This tells Vim 705 to setup conversion from the specified encoding to 'encoding'. Thus you can 706 use one word list for several target encodings. 707 708 /regions=usca ~ 709- A line starting with "/regions=" specifies the region names that are 710 supported. Each region name must be two ASCII letters. The first one is 711 region 1. Thus "/regions=usca" has region 1 "us" and region 2 "ca". 712 In an addition word list the region names should be equal to the main word 713 list! 714 715- Other lines starting with '/' are reserved for future use. The ones that 716 are not recognized are ignored. You do get a warning message, so that you 717 know something won't work. 718 719- A "/" may follow the word with the following items: 720 = Case must match exactly. 721 ? Rare word. 722 ! Bad (wrong) word. 723 1 to 9 A region in which the word is valid. If no regions are 724 specified the word is valid in all regions. 725 726Example: 727 728 # This is an example word list comment 729 /encoding=latin1 encoding of the file 730 /regions=uscagb regions "us", "ca" and "gb" 731 example word for all regions 732 blah/12 word for regions "us" and "ca" 733 vim/! bad word 734 Campbell/?3 rare word in region 3 "gb" 735 's mornings/= keep-case word 736 737Note that when "/=" is used the same word with all upper-case letters is not 738accepted. This is different from a word with mixed case that is automatically 739marked as keep-case, those words may appear in all upper-case letters. 740 741 742FORMAT WITH .AFF AND .DIC FILES *aff-dic-format* 743 744There are two files: the basic word list and an affix file. The affix file 745specifies settings for the language and can contain affixes. The affixes are 746used to modify the basic words to get the full word list. This significantly 747reduces the number of words, especially for a language like Polish. This is 748called affix compression. 749 750The basic word list and the affix file are combined with the ":mkspell" 751command and results in a binary spell file. All the preprocessing has been 752done, thus this file loads fast. The binary spell file format is described in 753the source code (src/spell.c). But only developers need to know about it. 754 755The preprocessing also allows us to take the Myspell language files and modify 756them before the Vim word list is made. The tools for this can be found in the 757"src/spell" directory. 758 759The format for the affix and word list files is based on what Myspell uses 760(the spell checker of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org). A description can be found 761here: 762 http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/affix.readme ~ 763Note that affixes are case sensitive, this isn't obvious from the description. 764 765Vim supports quite a few extras. They are described below |spell-affix-vim|. 766Attempts have been made to keep this compatible with other spell checkers, so 767that the same files can often be used. One other project that offers more 768than Myspell is Hunspell ( http://hunspell.sf.net ). 769 770 771WORD LIST FORMAT *spell-dic-format* 772 773A short example, with line numbers: 774 775 1 1234 ~ 776 2 aan ~ 777 3 Als ~ 778 4 Etten-Leur ~ 779 5 et al. ~ 780 6 's-Gravenhage ~ 781 7 's-Gravenhaags ~ 782 8 # word that differs between regions ~ 783 9 kado/1 ~ 784 10 cadeau/2 ~ 785 11 TCP,IP ~ 786 12 /the S affix may add a 's' ~ 787 13 bedel/S ~ 788 789The first line contains the number of words. Vim ignores it, but you do get 790an error message if it's not there. *E760* 791 792What follows is one word per line. White space at the end of the line is 793ignored, all other white space matters. The encoding is specified in the 794affix file |spell-SET|. 795 796Comment lines start with '#' or '/'. See the example lines 8 and 12. Note 797that putting a comment after a word is NOT allowed: 798 799 someword # comment that causes an error! ~ 800 801After the word there is an optional slash and flags. Most of these flags are 802letters that indicate the affixes that can be used with this word. These are 803specified with SFX and PFX lines in the .aff file, see |spell-SFX| and 804|spell-PFX|. Vim allows using other flag types with the FLAG item in the 805affix file |spell-FLAG|. 806 807When the word only has lower-case letters it will also match with the word 808starting with an upper-case letter. 809 810When the word includes an upper-case letter, this means the upper-case letter 811is required at this position. The same word with a lower-case letter at this 812position will not match. When some of the other letters are upper-case it will 813not match either. 814 815The word with all upper-case characters will always be OK, 816 817 word list matches does not match ~ 818 als als Als ALS ALs AlS aLs aLS 819 Als Als ALS als ALs AlS aLs aLS 820 ALS ALS als Als ALs AlS aLs aLS 821 AlS AlS ALS als Als ALs aLs aLS 822 823The KEEPCASE affix ID can be used to specifically match a word with identical 824case only, see below |spell-KEEPCASE|. 825 826Note: in line 5 to 7 non-word characters are used. You can include any 827character in a word. When checking the text a word still only matches when it 828appears with a non-word character before and after it. For Myspell a word 829starting with a non-word character probably won't work. 830 831In line 12 the word "TCP/IP" is defined. Since the slash has a special 832meaning the comma is used instead. This is defined with the SLASH item in the 833affix file, see |spell-SLASH|. Note that without this SLASH item the word 834will be "TCP,IP". 835 836 837AFFIX FILE FORMAT *spell-aff-format* *spell-affix-vim* 838 839 *spell-affix-comment* 840Comment lines in the .aff file start with a '#': 841 842 # comment line ~ 843 844Items with a fixed number of arguments can be followed by a comment. But only 845if none of the arguments can contain white space. The comment must start with 846a "#" character. Example: 847 848 KEEPCASE = # fix case for words with this flag ~ 849 850 851ENCODING *spell-SET* 852 853The affix file can be in any encoding that is supported by "iconv". However, 854in some cases the current locale should also be set properly at the time 855|:mkspell| is invoked. Adding FOL/LOW/UPP lines removes this requirement 856|spell-FOL|. 857 858The encoding should be specified before anything where the encoding matters. 859The encoding applies both to the affix file and the dictionary file. It is 860done with a SET line: 861 862 SET utf-8 ~ 863 864The encoding can be different from the value of the 'encoding' option at the 865time ":mkspell" is used. Vim will then convert everything to 'encoding' and 866generate a spell file for 'encoding'. If some of the used characters to not 867fit in 'encoding' you will get an error message. 868 *spell-affix-mbyte* 869When using a multi-byte encoding it's possible to use more different affix 870flags. But Myspell doesn't support that, thus you may not want to use it 871anyway. For compatibility use an 8-bit encoding. 872 873 874INFORMATION 875 876These entries in the affix file can be used to add information to the spell 877file. There are no restrictions on the format, but they should be in the 878right encoding. 879 880 *spell-NAME* *spell-VERSION* *spell-HOME* 881 *spell-AUTHOR* *spell-EMAIL* *spell-COPYRIGHT* 882 NAME Name of the language 883 VERSION 1.0.1 with fixes 884 HOME http://www.myhome.eu 885 AUTHOR John Doe 886 EMAIL john AT Doe DOT net 887 COPYRIGHT LGPL 888 889These fields are put in the .spl file as-is. The |:spellinfo| command can be 890used to view the info. 891 892 *:spellinfo* *:spelli* 893:spelli[nfo] Display the information for the spell file(s) used for 894 the current buffer. 895 896 897CHARACTER TABLES 898 *spell-affix-chars* 899When using an 8-bit encoding the affix file should define what characters are 900word characters. This is because the system where ":mkspell" is used may not 901support a locale with this encoding and isalpha() won't work. For example 902when using "cp1250" on Unix. 903 *E761* *E762* *spell-FOL* 904 *spell-LOW* *spell-UPP* 905Three lines in the affix file are needed. Simplistic example: 906 907 FOL áëñ ~ 908 LOW áëñ ~ 909 UPP ÁËÑ ~ 910 911All three lines must have exactly the same number of characters. 912 913The "FOL" line specifies the case-folded characters. These are used to 914compare words while ignoring case. For most encodings this is identical to 915the lower case line. 916 917The "LOW" line specifies the characters in lower-case. Mostly it's equal to 918the "FOL" line. 919 920The "UPP" line specifies the characters with upper-case. That is, a character 921is upper-case where it's different from the character at the same position in 922"FOL". 923 924An exception is made for the German sharp s ß. The upper-case version is 925"SS". In the FOL/LOW/UPP lines it should be included, so that it's recognized 926as a word character, but use the ß character in all three. 927 928ASCII characters should be omitted, Vim always handles these in the same way. 929When the encoding is UTF-8 no word characters need to be specified. 930 931 *E763* 932Vim allows you to use spell checking for several languages in the same file. 933You can list them in the 'spelllang' option. As a consequence all spell files 934for the same encoding must use the same word characters, otherwise they can't 935be combined without errors. 936 937If you get an E763 warning that the word tables differ you need to update your 938".spl" spell files. If you downloaded the files, get the latest version of 939all spell files you use. If you are only using one, e.g., German, then also 940download the recent English spell files. Otherwise generate the .spl file 941again with |:mkspell|. If you still get errors check the FOL, LOW and UPP 942lines in the used .aff files. 943 944The XX.ascii.spl spell file generated with the "-ascii" argument will not 945contain the table with characters, so that it can be combine with spell files 946for any encoding. The .add.spl files also do not contain the table. 947 948 949MID-WORD CHARACTERS 950 *spell-midword* 951Some characters are only to be considered word characters if they are used in 952between two ordinary word characters. An example is the single quote: It is 953often used to put text in quotes, thus it can't be recognized as a word 954character, but when it appears in between word characters it must be part of 955the word. This is needed to detect a spelling error such as they'are. That 956should be they're, but since "they" and "are" are words themselves that would 957go unnoticed. 958 959These characters are defined with MIDWORD in the .aff file. Example: 960 961 MIDWORD '- ~ 962 963 964FLAG TYPES *spell-FLAG* 965 966Flags are used to specify the affixes that can be used with a word and for 967other properties of the word. Normally single-character flags are used. This 968limits the number of possible flags, especially for 8-bit encodings. The FLAG 969item can be used if more affixes are to be used. Possible values: 970 971 FLAG long use two-character flags 972 FLAG num use numbers, from 1 up to 65000 973 FLAG caplong use one-character flags without A-Z and two-character 974 flags that start with A-Z 975 976With "FLAG num" the numbers in a list of affixes need to be separated with a 977comma: "234,2143,1435". This method is inefficient, but useful if the file is 978generated with a program. 979 980When using "caplong" the two-character flags all start with a capital: "Aa", 981"B1", "BB", etc. This is useful to use one-character flags for the most 982common items and two-character flags for uncommon items. 983 984Note: When using utf-8 only characters up to 65000 may be used for flags. 985 986Note: even when using "num" or "long" the number of flags available to 987compounding and prefixes is limited to about 250. 988 989 990AFFIXES 991 *spell-PFX* *spell-SFX* 992The usual PFX (prefix) and SFX (suffix) lines are supported (see the Myspell 993documentation or the Aspell manual: 994http://aspell.net/man-html/Affix-Compression.html). 995 996Summary: 997 SFX L Y 2 ~ 998 SFX L 0 re [^x] ~ 999 SFX L 0 ro x ~ 1000 1001The first line is a header and has four fields: 1002 SFX {flag} {combine} {count} 1003 1004{flag} The name used for the suffix. Mostly it's a single letter, 1005 but other characters can be used, see |spell-FLAG|. 1006 1007{combine} Can be 'Y' or 'N'. When 'Y' then the word plus suffix can 1008 also have a prefix. When 'N' then a prefix is not allowed. 1009 1010{count} The number of lines following. If this is wrong you will get 1011 an error message. 1012 1013For PFX the fields are exactly the same. 1014 1015The basic format for the following lines is: 1016 SFX {flag} {strip} {add} {condition} {extra} 1017 1018{flag} Must be the same as the {flag} used in the first line. 1019 1020{strip} Characters removed from the basic word. There is no check if 1021 the characters are actually there, only the length is used (in 1022 bytes). This better match the {condition}, otherwise strange 1023 things may happen. If the {strip} length is equal to or 1024 longer than the basic word the suffix won't be used. 1025 When {strip} is 0 (zero) then nothing is stripped. 1026 1027{add} Characters added to the basic word, after removing {strip}. 1028 Optionally there is a '/' followed by flags. The flags apply 1029 to the word plus affix. See |spell-affix-flags| 1030 1031{condition} A simplistic pattern. Only when this matches with a basic 1032 word will the suffix be used for that word. This is normally 1033 for using one suffix letter with different {add} and {strip} 1034 fields for words with different endings. 1035 When {condition} is a . (dot) there is no condition. 1036 The pattern may contain: 1037 - Literal characters. 1038 - A set of characters in []. [abc] matches a, b and c. 1039 A dash is allowed for a range [a-c], but this is 1040 Vim-specific. 1041 - A set of characters that starts with a ^, meaning the 1042 complement of the specified characters. [^abc] matches any 1043 character but a, b and c. 1044 1045{extra} Optional extra text: 1046 # comment Comment is ignored 1047 - Hunspell uses this, ignored 1048 1049For PFX the fields are the same, but the {strip}, {add} and {condition} apply 1050to the start of the word. 1051 1052Note: Myspell ignores any extra text after the relevant info. Vim requires 1053this text to start with a "#" so that mistakes don't go unnoticed. Example: 1054 1055 SFX F 0 in [^i]n # Spion > Spionin ~ 1056 SFX F 0 nen in # Bauerin > Bauerinnen ~ 1057 1058However, to avoid lots of errors in affix files written for Myspell, you can 1059add the IGNOREEXTRA flag. 1060 1061Apparently Myspell allows an affix name to appear more than once. Since this 1062might also be a mistake, Vim checks for an extra "S". The affix files for 1063Myspell that use this feature apparently have this flag. Example: 1064 1065 SFX a Y 1 S ~ 1066 SFX a 0 an . ~ 1067 1068 SFX a Y 2 S ~ 1069 SFX a 0 en . ~ 1070 SFX a 0 on . ~ 1071 1072 1073AFFIX FLAGS *spell-affix-flags* 1074 1075This is a feature that comes from Hunspell: The affix may specify flags. This 1076works similar to flags specified on a basic word. The flags apply to the 1077basic word plus the affix (but there are restrictions). Example: 1078 1079 SFX S Y 1 ~ 1080 SFX S 0 s . ~ 1081 1082 SFX A Y 1 ~ 1083 SFX A 0 able/S . ~ 1084 1085When the dictionary file contains "drink/AS" then these words are possible: 1086 1087 drink 1088 drinks uses S suffix 1089 drinkable uses A suffix 1090 drinkables uses A suffix and then S suffix 1091 1092Generally the flags of the suffix are added to the flags of the basic word, 1093both are used for the word plus suffix. But the flags of the basic word are 1094only used once for affixes, except that both one prefix and one suffix can be 1095used when both support combining. 1096 1097Specifically, the affix flags can be used for: 1098- Suffixes on suffixes, as in the example above. This works once, thus you 1099 can have two suffixes on a word (plus one prefix). 1100- Making the word with the affix rare, by using the |spell-RARE| flag. 1101- Exclude the word with the affix from compounding, by using the 1102 |spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG| flag. 1103- Allow the word with the affix to be part of a compound word on the side of 1104 the affix with the |spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG|. 1105- Use the NEEDCOMPOUND flag: word plus affix can only be used as part of a 1106 compound word. |spell-NEEDCOMPOUND| 1107- Compound flags: word plus affix can be part of a compound word at the end, 1108 middle, start, etc. The flags are combined with the flags of the basic 1109 word. |spell-compound| 1110- NEEDAFFIX: another affix is needed to make a valid word. 1111- CIRCUMFIX, as explained just below. 1112 1113 1114IGNOREEXTRA *spell-IGNOREEXTRA* 1115 1116Normally Vim gives an error for an extra field that does not start with '#'. 1117This avoids errors going unnoticed. However, some files created for Myspell 1118or Hunspell may contain many entries with an extra field. Use the IGNOREEXTRA 1119flag to avoid lots of errors. 1120 1121 1122CIRCUMFIX *spell-CIRCUMFIX* 1123 1124The CIRCUMFIX flag means a prefix and suffix must be added at the same time. 1125If a prefix has the CIRCUMFIX flag than only suffixes with the CIRCUMFIX flag 1126can be added, and the other way around. 1127An alternative is to only specify the suffix, and give the that suffix two 1128flags: The required prefix and the NEEDAFFIX flag. |spell-NEEDAFFIX| 1129 1130 1131PFXPOSTPONE *spell-PFXPOSTPONE* 1132 1133When an affix file has very many prefixes that apply to many words it's not 1134possible to build the whole word list in memory. This applies to Hebrew (a 1135list with all words is over a Gbyte). In that case applying prefixes must be 1136postponed. This makes spell checking slower. It is indicated by this keyword 1137in the .aff file: 1138 1139 PFXPOSTPONE ~ 1140 1141Only prefixes without a chop string and without flags can be postponed. 1142Prefixes with a chop string or with flags will still be included in the word 1143list. An exception if the chop string is one character and equal to the last 1144character of the added string, but in lower case. Thus when the chop string 1145is used to allow the following word to start with an upper case letter. 1146 1147 1148WORDS WITH A SLASH *spell-SLASH* 1149 1150The slash is used in the .dic file to separate the basic word from the affix 1151letters and other flags. Unfortunately, this means you cannot use a slash in 1152a word. Thus "TCP/IP" is not a word but "TCP" with the flags "IP". To include 1153a slash in the word put a backslash before it: "TCP\/IP". In the rare case 1154you want to use a backslash inside a word you need to use two backslashes. 1155Any other use of the backslash is reserved for future expansion. 1156 1157 1158KEEP-CASE WORDS *spell-KEEPCASE* 1159 1160In the affix file a KEEPCASE line can be used to define the affix name used 1161for keep-case words. Example: 1162 1163 KEEPCASE = ~ 1164 1165This flag is not supported by Myspell. It has the meaning that case matters. 1166This can be used if the word does not have the first letter in upper case at 1167the start of a sentence. Example: 1168 1169 word list matches does not match ~ 1170 's morgens/= 's morgens 'S morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS 1171 's Morgens 's Morgens 'S MORGENS 'S morgens 's morgens 1172 1173The flag can also be used to avoid that the word matches when it is in all 1174upper-case letters. 1175 1176 1177RARE WORDS *spell-RARE* 1178 1179In the affix file a RARE line can be used to define the affix name used for 1180rare words. Example: 1181 1182 RARE ? ~ 1183 1184Rare words are highlighted differently from bad words. This is to be used for 1185words that are correct for the language, but are hardly ever used and could be 1186a typing mistake anyway. When the same word is found as good it won't be 1187highlighted as rare. 1188 1189This flag can also be used on an affix, so that a basic word is not rare but 1190the basic word plus affix is rare |spell-affix-flags|. However, if the word 1191also appears as a good word in another way (e.g., in another region) it won't 1192be marked as rare. 1193 1194 1195BAD WORDS *spell-BAD* 1196 1197In the affix file a BAD line can be used to define the affix name used for 1198bad words. Example: 1199 1200 BAD ! ~ 1201 1202This can be used to exclude words that would otherwise be good. For example 1203"the the" in the .dic file: 1204 1205 the the/! ~ 1206 1207Once a word has been marked as bad it won't be undone by encountering the same 1208word as good. 1209 1210The flag also applies to the word with affixes, thus this can be used to mark 1211a whole bunch of related words as bad. 1212 1213 *spell-FORBIDDENWORD* 1214FORBIDDENWORD can be used just like BAD. For compatibility with Hunspell. 1215 1216 *spell-NEEDAFFIX* 1217The NEEDAFFIX flag is used to require that a word is used with an affix. The 1218word itself is not a good word (unless there is an empty affix). Example: 1219 1220 NEEDAFFIX + ~ 1221 1222 1223COMPOUND WORDS *spell-compound* 1224 1225A compound word is a longer word made by concatenating words that appear in 1226the .dic file. To specify which words may be concatenated a character is 1227used. This character is put in the list of affixes after the word. We will 1228call this character a flag here. Obviously these flags must be different from 1229any affix IDs used. 1230 1231 *spell-COMPOUNDFLAG* 1232The Myspell compatible method uses one flag, specified with COMPOUNDFLAG. All 1233words with this flag combine in any order. This means there is no control 1234over which word comes first. Example: 1235 COMPOUNDFLAG c ~ 1236 1237 *spell-COMPOUNDRULE* 1238A more advanced method to specify how compound words can be formed uses 1239multiple items with multiple flags. This is not compatible with Myspell 3.0. 1240Let's start with an example: 1241 COMPOUNDRULE c+ ~ 1242 COMPOUNDRULE se ~ 1243 1244The first line defines that words with the "c" flag can be concatenated in any 1245order. The second line defines compound words that are made of one word with 1246the "s" flag and one word with the "e" flag. With this dictionary: 1247 bork/c ~ 1248 onion/s ~ 1249 soup/e ~ 1250 1251You can make these words: 1252 bork 1253 borkbork 1254 borkborkbork 1255 (etc.) 1256 onion 1257 soup 1258 onionsoup 1259 1260The COMPOUNDRULE item may appear multiple times. The argument is made out of 1261one or more groups, where each group can be: 1262 one flag e.g., c 1263 alternate flags inside [] e.g., [abc] 1264Optionally this may be followed by: 1265 * the group appears zero or more times, e.g., sm*e 1266 + the group appears one or more times, e.g., c+ 1267 ? the group appears zero times or once, e.g., x? 1268 1269This is similar to the regexp pattern syntax (but not the same!). A few 1270examples with the sequence of word flags they require: 1271 COMPOUNDRULE x+ x xx xxx etc. 1272 COMPOUNDRULE yz yz 1273 COMPOUNDRULE x+z xz xxz xxxz etc. 1274 COMPOUNDRULE yx+ yx yxx yxxx etc. 1275 COMPOUNDRULE xy?z xz xyz 1276 1277 COMPOUNDRULE [abc]z az bz cz 1278 COMPOUNDRULE [abc]+z az aaz abaz bz baz bcbz cz caz cbaz etc. 1279 COMPOUNDRULE a[xyz]+ ax axx axyz ay ayx ayzz az azy azxy etc. 1280 COMPOUNDRULE sm*e se sme smme smmme etc. 1281 COMPOUNDRULE s[xyz]*e se sxe sxye sxyxe sye syze sze szye szyxe etc. 1282 1283A specific example: Allow a compound to be made of two words and a dash: 1284 In the .aff file: 1285 COMPOUNDRULE sde ~ 1286 NEEDAFFIX x ~ 1287 COMPOUNDWORDMAX 3 ~ 1288 COMPOUNDMIN 1 ~ 1289 In the .dic file: 1290 start/s ~ 1291 end/e ~ 1292 -/xd ~ 1293 1294This allows for the word "start-end", but not "startend". 1295 1296An additional implied rule is that, without further flags, a word with a 1297prefix cannot be compounded after another word, and a word with a suffix 1298cannot be compounded with a following word. Thus the affix cannot appear 1299on the inside of a compound word. This can be changed with the 1300|spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG|. 1301 1302 *spell-NEEDCOMPOUND* 1303The NEEDCOMPOUND flag is used to require that a word is used as part of a 1304compound word. The word itself is not a good word. Example: 1305 1306 NEEDCOMPOUND & ~ 1307 1308 *spell-ONLYINCOMPOUND* 1309The ONLYINCOMPOUND does exactly the same as NEEDCOMPOUND. Supported for 1310compatibility with Hunspell. 1311 1312 *spell-COMPOUNDMIN* 1313The minimal character length of a word used for compounding is specified with 1314COMPOUNDMIN. Example: 1315 COMPOUNDMIN 5 ~ 1316 1317When omitted there is no minimal length. Obviously you could just leave out 1318the compound flag from short words instead, this feature is present for 1319compatibility with Myspell. 1320 1321 *spell-COMPOUNDWORDMAX* 1322The maximum number of words that can be concatenated into a compound word is 1323specified with COMPOUNDWORDMAX. Example: 1324 COMPOUNDWORDMAX 3 ~ 1325 1326When omitted there is no maximum. It applies to all compound words. 1327 1328To set a limit for words with specific flags make sure the items in 1329COMPOUNDRULE where they appear don't allow too many words. 1330 1331 *spell-COMPOUNDSYLMAX* 1332The maximum number of syllables that a compound word may contain is specified 1333with COMPOUNDSYLMAX. Example: 1334 COMPOUNDSYLMAX 6 ~ 1335 1336This has no effect if there is no SYLLABLE item. Without COMPOUNDSYLMAX there 1337is no limit on the number of syllables. 1338 1339If both COMPOUNDWORDMAX and COMPOUNDSYLMAX are defined, a compound word is 1340accepted if it fits one of the criteria, thus is either made from up to 1341COMPOUNDWORDMAX words or contains up to COMPOUNDSYLMAX syllables. 1342 1343 *spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG* 1344The COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG specifies a flag that can be used on an affix. It 1345means that the word plus affix cannot be used in a compound word. Example: 1346 affix file: 1347 COMPOUNDFLAG c ~ 1348 COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG x ~ 1349 SFX a Y 2 ~ 1350 SFX a 0 s . ~ 1351 SFX a 0 ize/x . ~ 1352 dictionary: 1353 word/c ~ 1354 util/ac ~ 1355 1356This allows for "wordutil" and "wordutils" but not "wordutilize". 1357Note: this doesn't work for postponed prefixes yet. 1358 1359 *spell-COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG* 1360The COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG specifies a flag that can be used on an affix. It 1361means that the word plus affix can also be used in a compound word in a way 1362where the affix ends up halfway the word. Without this flag that is not 1363allowed. 1364Note: this doesn't work for postponed prefixes yet. 1365 1366 *spell-COMPOUNDROOT* 1367The COMPOUNDROOT flag is used for words in the dictionary that are already a 1368compound. This means it counts for two words when checking the compounding 1369rules. Can also be used for an affix to count the affix as a compounding 1370word. 1371 1372 *spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN* 1373CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN is used to define patterns that, when matching at the 1374position where two words are compounded together forbids the compound. 1375For example: 1376 CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN o e ~ 1377 1378This forbids compounding if the first word ends in "o" and the second word 1379starts with "e". 1380 1381The arguments must be plain text, no patterns are actually supported, despite 1382the item name. Case is always ignored. 1383 1384The Hunspell feature to use three arguments and flags is not supported. 1385 1386 *spell-NOCOMPOUNDSUGS* 1387This item indicates that using compounding to make suggestions is not a good 1388idea. Use this when compounding is used with very short or one-character 1389words. E.g. to make numbers out of digits. Without this flag creating 1390suggestions would spend most time trying all kind of weird compound words. 1391 1392 NOCOMPOUNDSUGS ~ 1393 1394 *spell-SYLLABLE* 1395The SYLLABLE item defines characters or character sequences that are used to 1396count the number of syllables in a word. Example: 1397 SYLLABLE aáeéiíoóöõuúüûy/aa/au/ea/ee/ei/ie/oa/oe/oo/ou/uu/ui ~ 1398 1399Before the first slash is the set of characters that are counted for one 1400syllable, also when repeated and mixed, until the next character that is not 1401in this set. After the slash come sequences of characters that are counted 1402for one syllable. These are preferred over using characters from the set. 1403With the example "ideeen" has three syllables, counted by "i", "ee" and "e". 1404 1405Only case-folded letters need to be included. 1406 1407Another way to restrict compounding was mentioned above: Adding the 1408|spell-COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG| flag to an affix causes all words that are made 1409with that affix to not be used for compounding. 1410 1411 1412UNLIMITED COMPOUNDING *spell-NOBREAK* 1413 1414For some languages, such as Thai, there is no space in between words. This 1415looks like all words are compounded. To specify this use the NOBREAK item in 1416the affix file, without arguments: 1417 NOBREAK ~ 1418 1419Vim will try to figure out where one word ends and a next starts. When there 1420are spelling mistakes this may not be quite right. 1421 1422 1423 *spell-COMMON* 1424Common words can be specified with the COMMON item. This will give better 1425suggestions when editing a short file. Example: 1426 1427 COMMON the of to and a in is it you that he was for on are ~ 1428 1429The words must be separated by white space, up to 25 per line. 1430When multiple regions are specified in a ":mkspell" command the common words 1431for all regions are combined and used for all regions. 1432 1433 *spell-NOSPLITSUGS* 1434This item indicates that splitting a word to make suggestions is not a good 1435idea. Split-word suggestions will appear only when there are few similar 1436words. 1437 1438 NOSPLITSUGS ~ 1439 1440 *spell-NOSUGGEST* 1441The flag specified with NOSUGGEST can be used for words that will not be 1442suggested. Can be used for obscene words. 1443 1444 NOSUGGEST % ~ 1445 1446 1447REPLACEMENTS *spell-REP* 1448 1449In the affix file REP items can be used to define common mistakes. This is 1450used to make spelling suggestions. The items define the "from" text and the 1451"to" replacement. Example: 1452 1453 REP 4 ~ 1454 REP f ph ~ 1455 REP ph f ~ 1456 REP k ch ~ 1457 REP ch k ~ 1458 1459The first line specifies the number of REP lines following. Vim ignores the 1460number, but it must be there (for compatibility with Myspell). 1461 1462Don't include simple one-character replacements or swaps. Vim will try these 1463anyway. You can include whole words if you want to, but you might want to use 1464the "file:" item in 'spellsuggest' instead. 1465 1466You can include a space by using an underscore: 1467 1468 REP the_the the ~ 1469 1470 1471SIMILAR CHARACTERS *spell-MAP* *E783* 1472 1473In the affix file MAP items can be used to define letters that are very much 1474alike. This is mostly used for a letter with different accents. This is used 1475to prefer suggestions with these letters substituted. Example: 1476 1477 MAP 2 ~ 1478 MAP eéëêè ~ 1479 MAP uüùúû ~ 1480 1481The first line specifies the number of MAP lines following. Vim ignores the 1482number, but the line must be there. 1483 1484Each letter must appear in only one of the MAP items. It's a bit more 1485efficient if the first letter is ASCII or at least one without accents. 1486 1487 1488.SUG FILE *spell-NOSUGFILE* 1489 1490When soundfolding is specified in the affix file then ":mkspell" will normally 1491produce a .sug file next to the .spl file. This file is used to find 1492suggestions by their sound-a-like form quickly. At the cost of a lot of 1493memory (the amount depends on the number of words, |:mkspell| will display an 1494estimate when it's done). 1495 1496To avoid producing a .sug file use this item in the affix file: 1497 1498 NOSUGFILE ~ 1499 1500Users can simply omit the .sug file if they don't want to use it. 1501 1502 1503SOUND-A-LIKE *spell-SAL* 1504 1505In the affix file SAL items can be used to define the sounds-a-like mechanism 1506to be used. The main items define the "from" text and the "to" replacement. 1507Simplistic example: 1508 1509 SAL CIA X ~ 1510 SAL CH X ~ 1511 SAL C K ~ 1512 SAL K K ~ 1513 1514There are a few rules and this can become quite complicated. An explanation 1515how it works can be found in the Aspell manual: 1516http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-Code.html. 1517 1518There are a few special items: 1519 1520 SAL followup true ~ 1521 SAL collapse_result true ~ 1522 SAL remove_accents true ~ 1523 1524"1" has the same meaning as "true". Any other value means "false". 1525 1526 1527SIMPLE SOUNDFOLDING *spell-SOFOFROM* *spell-SOFOTO* 1528 1529The SAL mechanism is complex and slow. A simpler mechanism is mapping all 1530characters to another character, mapping similar sounding characters to the 1531same character. At the same time this does case folding. You can not have 1532both SAL items and simple soundfolding. 1533 1534There are two items required: one to specify the characters that are mapped 1535and one that specifies the characters they are mapped to. They must have 1536exactly the same number of characters. Example: 1537 1538 SOFOFROM abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ~ 1539 SOFOTO ebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkesebctefghejklnnepkrstevvkes ~ 1540 1541In the example all vowels are mapped to the same character 'e'. Another 1542method would be to leave out all vowels. Some characters that sound nearly 1543the same and are often mixed up, such as 'm' and 'n', are mapped to the same 1544character. Don't do this too much, all words will start looking alike. 1545 1546Characters that do not appear in SOFOFROM will be left out, except that all 1547white space is replaced by one space. Sequences of the same character in 1548SOFOFROM are replaced by one. 1549 1550You can use the |soundfold()| function to try out the results. Or set the 1551'verbose' option to see the score in the output of the |z=| command. 1552 1553 1554UNSUPPORTED ITEMS *spell-affix-not-supported* 1555 1556These items appear in the affix file of other spell checkers. In Vim they are 1557ignored, not supported or defined in another way. 1558 1559ACCENT (Hunspell) *spell-ACCENT* 1560 Use MAP instead. |spell-MAP| 1561 1562BREAK (Hunspell) *spell-BREAK* 1563 Define break points. Unclear how it works exactly. 1564 Not supported. 1565 1566CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE (Hunspell) *spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE* 1567 Disallow uppercase letters at compound word boundaries. 1568 Not supported. 1569 1570CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP (Hunspell) *spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP* 1571 Disallow using the same word twice in a compound. Not 1572 supported. 1573 1574CHECKCOMPOUNDREP (Hunspell) *spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDREP* 1575 Something about using REP items and compound words. Not 1576 supported. 1577 1578CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE (Hunspell) *spell-CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE* 1579 Forbid three identical characters when compounding. Not 1580 supported. 1581 1582CHECKSHARPS (Hunspell)) *spell-CHECKSHARPS* 1583 SS letter pair in uppercased (German) words may be upper case 1584 sharp s (ß). Not supported. 1585 1586COMPLEXPREFIXES (Hunspell) *spell-COMPLEXPREFIXES* 1587 Enables using two prefixes. Not supported. 1588 1589COMPOUND (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUND* 1590 This is one line with the count of COMPOUND items, followed by 1591 that many COMPOUND lines with a pattern. 1592 Remove the first line with the count and rename the other 1593 items to COMPOUNDRULE |spell-COMPOUNDRULE| 1594 1595COMPOUNDFIRST (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDFIRST* 1596 Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. |spell-COMPOUNDRULE| 1597 1598COMPOUNDBEGIN (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDBEGIN* 1599 Words signed with COMPOUNDBEGIN may be first elements in 1600 compound words. 1601 Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. |spell-COMPOUNDRULE| 1602 1603COMPOUNDLAST (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDLAST* 1604 Words signed with COMPOUNDLAST may be last elements in 1605 compound words. 1606 Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. |spell-COMPOUNDRULE| 1607 1608COMPOUNDEND (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDEND* 1609 Probably the same as COMPOUNDLAST 1610 1611COMPOUNDMIDDLE (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDMIDDLE* 1612 Words signed with COMPOUNDMIDDLE may be middle elements in 1613 compound words. 1614 Use COMPOUNDRULE instead. |spell-COMPOUNDRULE| 1615 1616COMPOUNDRULES (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDRULES* 1617 Number of COMPOUNDRULE lines following. Ignored, but the 1618 argument must be a number. 1619 1620COMPOUNDSYLLABLE (Hunspell) *spell-COMPOUNDSYLLABLE* 1621 Use SYLLABLE and COMPOUNDSYLMAX instead. |spell-SYLLABLE| 1622 |spell-COMPOUNDSYLMAX| 1623 1624KEY (Hunspell) *spell-KEY* 1625 Define characters that are close together on the keyboard. 1626 Used to give better suggestions. Not supported. 1627 1628LANG (Hunspell) *spell-LANG* 1629 This specifies language-specific behavior. This actually 1630 moves part of the language knowledge into the program, 1631 therefore Vim does not support it. Each language property 1632 must be specified separately. 1633 1634LEMMA_PRESENT (Hunspell) *spell-LEMMA_PRESENT* 1635 Only needed for morphological analysis. 1636 1637MAXNGRAMSUGS (Hunspell) *spell-MAXNGRAMSUGS* 1638 Set number of n-gram suggestions. Not supported. 1639 1640PSEUDOROOT (Hunspell) *spell-PSEUDOROOT* 1641 Use NEEDAFFIX instead. |spell-NEEDAFFIX| 1642 1643SUGSWITHDOTS (Hunspell) *spell-SUGSWITHDOTS* 1644 Adds dots to suggestions. Vim doesn't need this. 1645 1646SYLLABLENUM (Hunspell) *spell-SYLLABLENUM* 1647 Not supported. 1648 1649TRY (Myspell, Hunspell, others) *spell-TRY* 1650 Vim does not use the TRY item, it is ignored. For making 1651 suggestions the actual characters in the words are used, that 1652 is much more efficient. 1653 1654WORDCHARS (Hunspell) *spell-WORDCHARS* 1655 Used to recognize words. Vim doesn't need it, because there 1656 is no need to separate words before checking them (using a 1657 trie instead of a hashtable). 1658 1659 vim:tw=78:sw=4:ts=8:noet:ft=help:norl: 1660