[ubuntu-in] importing aspell-hi dictionary into another computer

[Gora Mohanty]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 23:37:03 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
Dinbandhu <dinbandhu at sprynet.com> wrote:

> I have spent months working on both my aspell-hi personalized
> dictionary as well as the aspell-hi system-wide dictionary, and
> now have a fairly extensive dictionary whose vocabulary is
> specialized for the writing which I do. I am now helping a
> colleague to set up the same aspell Hindi spell-checker in his
> computer, and need to install these Hindi dictionaries of mine
> for use with aspell in his computer.
[...]
>                                 So it would seem logical enough
> that if I want to put my hi.cwl into his computer, then I can
> just compress it into the hi.cwl.gz format and install it in
> his computer. Should this work?
[...]

No, just copying hi.cwl.gz is not going to work, and that
procedure never has worked, at least not with recent versions
of aspell. The file that aspell actually uses is in
/var/lib/aspell/hi.rws on an Ubuntu system.

The procedure to make this work is:
 o Download the aspell Hindi dictionary distribution from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/hi/aspell6-hi-0.02-0.tar.bz2
 o Unarchive it:
     tar xjf aspell6-hi-0.02-0.tar.bz2
     cd aspell6-hi-0.02-0  # All further work from this dir.
 o Replace hi.cwl in the distribution with your hi.cwl.
 o See README for instructions. You have to run the following
   commands:
     ./configure  
     make
     sudo make install
 o You can now remake the aspell Hindi distribution for use in
   a different computer, with:
     make dist
   which will create a aspell6-hi-0.02-0.tar.bz2 distribution
   package in the current directory. This will contain the new
   hi.cwl, and saves you the trouble of manually replacing it
   each time. However, please do not redistribute it publicly
   with the same verion number, and variant name, so as not to
   cause confusion with the official distribution. If you wish
   to make your list publicly available, please contact me off-
   list.
 
> Another related question: I notice that after installing
> aspell-hi in my colleague's computer, there are no
> .aspell.hi.prepl and .aspell.hi.pws files in his home
> folder. These used to be the names of the personalized
> dictionaries. Is it now done in a different way? Because I
> would like to install my .aspell.hi.prepl and .aspell.hi.pws
> files in his computer as well.

These are replacement word lists specific to the user, and are
created only when the user adds personal words to the list in
the aspell dictionary (usually through some aspell client like
the gedit spell-checker). You should be able to copy this to
the home directory of a new user, and have these work, provided
aspell Hindi is installed and working.

Regards,
Gora