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spell.txt
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spell.txt
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*spell.txt* For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2014 Jul 02
VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar
Spell checking *spell*
1. Quick start |spell-quickstart|
2. Remarks on spell checking |spell-remarks|
3. Generating a spell file |spell-mkspell|
4. Spell file format |spell-file-format|
{Vi does not have any of these commands}
Spell checking is not available when the |+syntax| feature has been disabled
at compile time.
Note: There also is a vimspell plugin. If you have it you can do ":help
vimspell" to find about it. But you will probably want to get rid of the
plugin and use the 'spell' option instead, it works better.
==============================================================================
1. Quick start *spell-quickstart* *E756*
This command switches on spell checking: >
:setlocal spell spelllang=en_us
This switches on the 'spell' option and specifies to check for US English.
The words that are not recognized are highlighted with one of these:
SpellBad word not recognized |hl-SpellBad|
SpellCap word not capitalised |hl-SpellCap|
SpellRare rare word |hl-SpellRare|
SpellLocal wrong spelling for selected region |hl-SpellLocal|
Vim only checks words for spelling, there is no grammar check.
If the 'mousemodel' option is set to "popup" and the cursor is on a badly
spelled word or it is "popup_setpos" and the mouse pointer is on a badly
spelled word, then the popup menu will contain a submenu to replace the bad
word. Note: this slows down the appearance of the popup menu. Note for GTK:
don't release the right mouse button until the menu appears, otherwise it
won't work.
To search for the next misspelled word:
*]s*
]s Move to next misspelled word after the cursor.
A count before the command can be used to repeat.
'wrapscan' applies.
*[s*
[s Like "]s" but search backwards, find the misspelled
word before the cursor. Doesn't recognize words
split over two lines, thus may stop at words that are
not highlighted as bad. Does not stop at word with
missing capital at the start of a line.
*]S*
]S Like "]s" but only stop at bad words, not at rare
words or words for another region.
*[S*
[S Like "]S" but search backwards.
To add words to your own word list:
*zg*
zg Add word under the cursor as a good word to the first
name in 'spellfile'. A count may precede the command
to indicate the entry in 'spellfile' to be used. A
count of two uses the second entry.
In Visual mode the selected characters are added as a
word (including white space!).
When the cursor is on text that is marked as badly
spelled then the marked text is used.
Otherwise the word under the cursor, separated by
non-word characters, is used.
If the word is explicitly marked as bad word in
another spell file the result is unpredictable.
*zG*
zG Like "zg" but add the word to the internal word list
|internal-wordlist|.
*zw*
zw Like "zg" but mark the word as a wrong (bad) word.
If the word already appears in 'spellfile' it is
turned into a comment line. See |spellfile-cleanup|
for getting rid of those.
*zW*
zW Like "zw" but add the word to the internal word list
|internal-wordlist|.
zuw *zug* *zuw*
zug Undo |zw| and |zg|, remove the word from the entry in
'spellfile'. Count used as with |zg|.
zuW *zuG* *zuW*
zuG Undo |zW| and |zG|, remove the word from the internal
word list. Count used as with |zg|.
*:spe* *:spellgood*
:[count]spe[llgood] {word}
Add {word} as a good word to 'spellfile', like with
|zg|. Without count the first name is used, with a
count of two the second entry, etc.
:spe[llgood]! {word} Add {word} as a good word to the internal word list,
like with |zG|.
*:spellw* *:spellwrong*
:[count]spellw[rong] {word}
Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to 'spellfile', as
with |zw|. Without count the first name is used, with
a count of two the second entry, etc.
:spellw[rong]! {word} Add {word} as a wrong (bad) word to the internal word
list, like with |zW|.
:[count]spellu[ndo] {word} *:spellu* *:spellundo*
Like |zuw|. [count] used as with |:spellgood|.
:spellu[ndo]! {word} Like |zuW|. [count] used as with |:spellgood|.
After adding a word to 'spellfile' with the above commands its associated
".spl" file will automatically be updated and reloaded. If you change
'spellfile' manually you need to use the |:mkspell| command. This sequence of
commands mostly works well: >
:edit <file in 'spellfile'>
< (make changes to the spell file) >
:mkspell! %
More details about the 'spellfile' format below |spell-wordlist-format|.
*internal-wordlist*
The internal word list is used for all buffers where 'spell' is set. It is
not stored, it is lost when you exit Vim. It is also cleared when 'encoding'
is set.
Finding suggestions for bad words:
*z=*
z= For the word under/after the cursor suggest correctly
spelled words. This also works to find alternatives
for a word that is not highlighted as a bad word,
e.g., when the word after it is bad.
In Visual mode the highlighted text is taken as the
word to be replaced.
The results are sorted on similarity to the word being
replaced.
This may take a long time. Hit CTRL-C when you get
bored.
If the command is used without a count the
alternatives are listed and you can enter the number
of your choice or press <Enter> if you don't want to
replace. You can also use the mouse to click on your
choice (only works if the mouse can be used in Normal
mode and when there are no line wraps). Click on the
first line (the header) to cancel.
The suggestions listed normally replace a highlighted
bad word. Sometimes they include other text, in that
case the replaced text is also listed after a "<".
If a count is used that suggestion is used, without
prompting. For example, "1z=" always takes the first
suggestion.
If 'verbose' is non-zero a score will be displayed
with the suggestions to indicate the likeliness to the
badly spelled word (the higher the score the more
different).
When a word was replaced the redo command "." will
repeat the word replacement. This works like "ciw",
the good word and <Esc>. This does NOT work for Thai
and other languages without spaces between words.
*:spellr* *:spellrepall* *E752* *E753*
:spellr[epall] Repeat the replacement done by |z=| for all matches
with the replaced word in the current window.
In Insert mode, when the cursor is after a badly spelled word, you can use
CTRL-X s to find suggestions. This works like Insert mode completion. Use
CTRL-N to use the next suggestion, CTRL-P to go back. |i_CTRL-X_s|
The 'spellsuggest' option influences how the list of suggestions is generated
and sorted. See |'spellsuggest'|.
The 'spellcapcheck' option is used to check the first word of a sentence
starts with a capital. This doesn't work for the first word in the file.
When there is a line break right after a sentence the highlighting of the next
line may be postponed. Use |CTRL-L| when needed. Also see |set-spc-auto| for
how it can be set automatically when 'spelllang' is set.
Vim counts the number of times a good word is encountered. This is used to
sort the suggestions: words that have been seen before get a small bonus,
words that have been seen often get a bigger bonus. The COMMON item in the
affix file can be used to define common words, so that this mechanism also
works in a new or short file |spell-COMMON|.
==============================================================================
2. Remarks on spell checking *spell-remarks*
PERFORMANCE
Vim does on-the-fly spell checking. To make this work fast the word list is
loaded in memory. Thus this uses a lot of memory (1 Mbyte or more). There
might also be a noticeable delay when the word list is loaded, which happens
when 'spell' is set and when 'spelllang' is set while 'spell' was already set.
To minimize the delay each word list is only loaded once, it is not deleted
when 'spelllang' is made empty or 'spell' is reset. When 'encoding' is set
all the word lists are reloaded, thus you may notice a delay then too.
REGIONS
A word may be spelled differently in various regions. For example, English
comes in (at least) these variants:
en all regions
en_au Australia
en_ca Canada
en_gb Great Britain
en_nz New Zealand
en_us USA
Words that are not used in one region but are used in another region are
highlighted with SpellLocal |hl-SpellLocal|.
Always use lowercase letters for the language and region names.
When adding a word with |zg| or another command it's always added for all
regions. You can change that by manually editing the 'spellfile'. See
|spell-wordlist-format|. Note that the regions as specified in the files in
'spellfile' are only used when all entries in 'spelllang' specify the same
region (not counting files specified by their .spl name).
*spell-german*
Specific exception: For German these special regions are used:
de all German words accepted
de_de old and new spelling
de_19 old spelling
de_20 new spelling
de_at Austria
de_ch Switzerland
*spell-russian*
Specific exception: For Russian these special regions are used:
ru all Russian words accepted
ru_ru "IE" letter spelling
ru_yo "YO" letter spelling
*spell-yiddish*
Yiddish requires using "utf-8" encoding, because of the special characters
used. If you are using latin1 Vim will use transliterated (romanized) Yiddish
instead. If you want to use transliterated Yiddish with utf-8 use "yi-tr".
In a table:
'encoding' 'spelllang'
utf-8 yi Yiddish
latin1 yi transliterated Yiddish
utf-8 yi-tr transliterated Yiddish
*spell-cjk*
Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian characters are normally marked as
errors, because spell checking of these characters is not supported. If
'spelllang' includes "cjk", these characters are not marked as errors. This
is useful when editing text with spell checking while some Asian words are
present.
SPELL FILES *spell-load*
Vim searches for spell files in the "spell" subdirectory of the directories in
'runtimepath'. The name is: LL.EEE.spl, where:
LL the language name
EEE the value of 'encoding'
The value for "LL" comes from 'spelllang', but excludes the region name.
Examples:
'spelllang' LL ~
en_us en
en-rare en-rare
medical_ca medical
Only the first file is loaded, the one that is first in 'runtimepath'. If
this succeeds then additionally files with the name LL.EEE.add.spl are loaded.
All the ones that are found are used.
If no spell file is found the |SpellFileMissing| autocommand event is
triggered. This may trigger the |spellfile.vim| plugin to offer you
downloading the spell file.
Additionally, the files related to the names in 'spellfile' are loaded. These
are the files that |zg| and |zw| add good and wrong words to.
Exceptions:
- Vim uses "latin1" when 'encoding' is "iso-8859-15". The euro sign doesn't
matter for spelling.
- When no spell file for 'encoding' is found "ascii" is tried. This only
works for languages where nearly all words are ASCII, such as English. It
helps when 'encoding' is not "latin1", such as iso-8859-2, and English text
is being edited. For the ".add" files the same name as the found main
spell file is used.
For example, with these values:
'runtimepath' is "~/.vim,/usr/share/vim70,~/.vim/after"
'encoding' is "iso-8859-2"
'spelllang' is "pl"
Vim will look for:
1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl
2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.spl
3. ~/.vim/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl
4. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl
5. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.iso-8859-2.add.spl
This assumes 1. is not found and 2. is found.
If 'encoding' is "latin1" Vim will look for:
1. ~/.vim/spell/pl.latin1.spl
2. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.latin1.spl
3. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.latin1.spl
4. ~/.vim/spell/pl.ascii.spl
5. /usr/share/vim70/spell/pl.ascii.spl
6. ~/.vim/after/spell/pl.ascii.spl
This assumes none of them are found (Polish doesn't make sense when leaving
out the non-ASCII characters).
Spelling for EBCDIC is currently not supported.
A spell file might not be available in the current 'encoding'. See
|spell-mkspell| about how to create a spell file. Converting a spell file
with "iconv" will NOT work!
Note: on VMS ".{enc}.spl" is changed to "_{enc}.spl" to avoid trouble with
filenames.
*spell-sug-file* *E781*
If there is a file with exactly the same name as the ".spl" file but ending in
".sug", that file will be used for giving better suggestions. It isn't loaded
before suggestions are made to reduce memory use.
*E758* *E759* *E778* *E779* *E780* *E782*
When loading a spell file Vim checks that it is properly formatted. If you
get an error the file may be truncated, modified or intended for another Vim
version.
SPELLFILE CLEANUP *spellfile-cleanup*
The |zw| command turns existing entries in 'spellfile' into comment lines.
This avoids having to write a new file every time, but results in the file
only getting longer, never shorter. To clean up the comment lines in all
".add" spell files do this: >
:runtime spell/cleanadd.vim
This deletes all comment lines, except the ones that start with "##". Use
"##" lines to add comments that you want to keep.
You can invoke this script as often as you like. A variable is provided to
skip updating files that have been changed recently. Set it to the number of
seconds that has passed since a file was changed before it will be cleaned.
For example, to clean only files that were not changed in the last hour: >
let g:spell_clean_limit = 60 * 60
The default is one second.
WORDS
Vim uses a fixed method to recognize a word. This is independent of
'iskeyword', so that it also works in help files and for languages that
include characters like '-' in 'iskeyword'. The word characters do depend on
'encoding'.
The table with word characters is stored in the main .spl file. Therefore it
matters what the current locale is when generating it! A .add.spl file does
not contain a word table though.
For a word that starts with a digit the digit is ignored, unless the word as a
whole is recognized. Thus if "3D" is a word and "D" is not then "3D" is
recognized as a word, but if "3D" is not a word then only the "D" is marked as
bad. Hex numbers in the form 0x12ab and 0X12AB are recognized.
WORD COMBINATIONS
It is possible to spell-check words that include a space. This is used to
recognize words that are invalid when used by themselves, e.g. for "et al.".
It can also be used to recognize "the the" and highlight it.
The number of spaces is irrelevant. In most cases a line break may also
appear. However, this makes it difficult to find out where to start checking
for spelling mistakes. When you make a change to one line and only that line
is redrawn Vim won't look in the previous line, thus when "et" is at the end
of the previous line "al." will be flagged as an error. And when you type
"the<CR>the" the highlighting doesn't appear until the first line is redrawn.
Use |CTRL-L| to redraw right away. "[s" will also stop at a word combination
with a line break.
When encountering a line break Vim skips characters such as '*', '>' and '"',
so that comments in C, shell and Vim code can be spell checked.
SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING *spell-syntax*
Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be
done:
1. everywhere default
2. in specific items use "contains=@Spell"
3. everywhere but specific items use "contains=@NoSpell"
For the second method adding the @NoSpell cluster will disable spell checking
again. This can be used, for example, to add @Spell to the comments of a
program, and add @NoSpell for items that shouldn't be checked.
Also see |:syn-spell| for text that is not in a syntax item.
VIM SCRIPTS
If you want to write a Vim script that does something with spelling, you may
find these functions useful:
spellbadword() find badly spelled word at the cursor
spellsuggest() get list of spelling suggestions
soundfold() get the sound-a-like version of a word
SETTING 'spellcapcheck' AUTOMATICALLY *set-spc-auto*
After the 'spelllang' option has been set successfully, Vim will source the
files "spell/LANG.vim" in 'runtimepath'. "LANG" is the value of 'spelllang'
up to the first comma, dot or underscore. This can be used to set options
specifically for the language, especially 'spellcapcheck'.
The distribution includes a few of these files. Use this command to see what
they do: >
:next $VIMRUNTIME/spell/*.vim
Note that the default scripts don't set 'spellcapcheck' if it was changed from
the default value. This assumes the user prefers another value then.
DOUBLE SCORING *spell-double-scoring*
The 'spellsuggest' option can be used to select "double" scoring. This
mechanism is based on the principle that there are two kinds of spelling
mistakes:
1. You know how to spell the word, but mistype something. This results in a
small editing distance (character swapped/omitted/inserted) and possibly a
word that sounds completely different.
2. You don't know how to spell the word and type something that sounds right.
The edit distance can be big but the word is similar after sound-folding.
Since scores for these two mistakes will be very different we use a list
for each and mix them.
The sound-folding is slow and people that know the language won't make the
second kind of mistakes. Therefore 'spellsuggest' can be set to select the
preferred method for scoring the suggestions.
==============================================================================
3. Generating a spell file *spell-mkspell*
Vim uses a binary file format for spelling. This greatly speeds up loading
the word list and keeps it small.
*.aff* *.dic* *Myspell*
You can create a Vim spell file from the .aff and .dic files that Myspell
uses. Myspell is used by OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. The OpenOffice .oxt
files are zip files which contain the .aff and .dic files. You should be able
to find them here:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/dictionary
The older, OpenOffice 2 files may be used if this doesn't work:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries
You can also use a plain word list. The results are the same, the choice
depends on what word lists you can find.
If you install Aap (from www.a-a-p.org) you can use the recipes in the
runtime/spell/??/ directories. Aap will take care of downloading the files,
apply patches needed for Vim and build the .spl file.
Make sure your current locale is set properly, otherwise Vim doesn't know what
characters are upper/lower case letters. If the locale isn't available (e.g.,
when using an MS-Windows codepage on Unix) add tables to the .aff file
|spell-affix-chars|. If the .aff file doesn't define a table then the word
table of the currently active spelling is used. If spelling is not active
then Vim will try to guess.
*:mksp* *:mkspell*
:mksp[ell][!] [-ascii] {outname} {inname} ...
Generate a Vim spell file from word lists. Example: >
:mkspell /tmp/nl nl_NL.words
< *E751*
When {outname} ends in ".spl" it is used as the output
file name. Otherwise it should be a language name,
such as "en", without the region name. The file
written will be "{outname}.{encoding}.spl", where
{encoding} is the value of the 'encoding' option.
When the output file already exists [!] must be used
to overwrite it.
When the [-ascii] argument is present, words with
non-ascii characters are skipped. The resulting file
ends in "ascii.spl".
The input can be the Myspell format files {inname}.aff
and {inname}.dic. If {inname}.aff does not exist then
{inname} is used as the file name of a plain word
list.
Multiple {inname} arguments can be given to combine
regions into one Vim spell file. Example: >
:mkspell ~/.vim/spell/en /tmp/en_US /tmp/en_CA /tmp/en_AU
< This combines the English word lists for US, CA and AU
into one en.spl file.
Up to eight regions can be combined. *E754* *E755*
The REP and SAL items of the first .aff file where
they appear are used. |spell-REP| |spell-SAL|
*E845*
This command uses a lot of memory, required to find
the optimal word tree (Polish, Italian and Hungarian
require several hundred Mbyte). The final result will
be much smaller, because compression is used. To
avoid running out of memory compression will be done
now and then. This can be tuned with the 'mkspellmem'
option.
After the spell file was written and it was being used
in a buffer it will be reloaded automatically.
:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}.{enc}.add
Like ":mkspell" above, using {name}.{enc}.add as the
input file and producing an output file in the same
directory that has ".spl" appended.
:mksp[ell] [-ascii] {name}
Like ":mkspell" above, using {name} as the input file
and producing an output file in the same directory
that has ".{enc}.spl" appended.
Vim will report the number of duplicate words. This might be a mistake in the
list of words. But sometimes it is used to have different prefixes and
suffixes for the same basic word to avoid them combining (e.g. Czech uses
this). If you want Vim to report all duplicate words set the 'verbose'
option.
Since you might want to change a Myspell word list for use with Vim the
following procedure is recommended:
1. Obtain the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files from Myspell.
2. Make a copy of these files to xx_YY.orig.aff and xx_YY.orig.dic.
3. Change the xx_YY.aff and xx_YY.dic files to remove bad words, add missing
words, define word characters with FOL/LOW/UPP, etc. The distributed
"*.diff" files can be used.
4. Start Vim with the right locale and use |:mkspell| to generate the Vim
spell file.
5. Try out the spell file with ":set spell spelllang=xx" if you wrote it in
a spell directory in 'runtimepath', or ":set spelllang=xx.enc.spl" if you
wrote it somewhere else.
When the Myspell files are updated you can merge the differences:
1. Obtain the new Myspell files as xx_YY.new.aff and xx_UU.new.dic.
2. Use Vimdiff to see what changed: >
vimdiff xx_YY.orig.dic xx_YY.new.dic
3. Take over the changes you like in xx_YY.dic.
You may also need to change xx_YY.aff.
4. Rename xx_YY.new.dic to xx_YY.orig.dic and xx_YY.new.aff to xx_YY.new.aff.
SPELL FILE VERSIONS *E770* *E771* *E772*
Spell checking is a relatively new feature in Vim, thus it's possible that the
.spl file format will be changed to support more languages. Vim will check
the validity of the spell file and report anything wrong.
E771: Old spell file, needs to be updated ~
This spell file is older than your Vim. You need to update the .spl file.
E772: Spell file is for newer version of Vim ~
This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim. You need to
update Vim.
E770: Unsupported section in spell file ~
This means the spell file was made for a later version of Vim and contains a
section that is required for the spell file to work. In this case it's
probably a good idea to upgrade your Vim.
SPELL FILE DUMP
If for some reason you want to check what words are supported by the currently
used spelling files, use this command:
*:spelldump* *:spelld*
:spelld[ump] Open a new window and fill it with all currently valid
words. Compound words are not included.
Note: For some languages the result may be enormous,
causing Vim to run out of memory.
:spelld[ump]! Like ":spelldump" and include the word count. This is
the number of times the word was found while
updating the screen. Words that are in COMMON items
get a starting count of 10.
The format of the word list is used |spell-wordlist-format|. You should be
able to read it with ":mkspell" to generate one .spl file that includes all
the words.
When all entries to 'spelllang' use the same regions or no regions at all then
the region information is included in the dumped words. Otherwise only words
for the current region are included and no "/regions" line is generated.
Comment lines with the name of the .spl file are used as a header above the
words that were generated from that .spl file.
SPELL FILE MISSING *spell-SpellFileMissing* *spellfile.vim*
If the spell file for the language you are using is not available, you will
get an error message. But if the "spellfile.vim" plugin is active it will
offer you to download the spell file. Just follow the instructions, it will
ask you where to write the file (there must be a writable directory in
'runtimepath' for this).
The plugin has a default place where to look for spell files, on the Vim ftp
server. If you want to use another location or another protocol, set the
g:spellfile_URL variable to the directory that holds the spell files. The
|netrw| plugin is used for getting the file, look there for the specific
syntax of the URL. Example: >
let g:spellfile_URL = 'http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/spell'
You may need to escape special characters.
The plugin will only ask about downloading a language once. If you want to
try again anyway restart Vim, or set g:spellfile_URL to another value (e.g.,
prepend a space).
To avoid using the "spellfile.vim" plugin do this in your vimrc file: >
let loaded_spellfile_plugin = 1
Instead of using the plugin you can define a |SpellFileMissing| autocommand to
handle the missing file yourself. You can use it like this: >
:au SpellFileMissing * call Download_spell_file(expand('<amatch>'))
Thus the <amatch> item contains the name of the language. Another important
value is 'encoding', since every encoding has its own spell file. With two
exceptions:
- For ISO-8859-15 (latin9) the name "latin1" is used (the encodings only
differ in characters not used in dictionary words).
- The name "ascii" may also be used for some languages where the words use
only ASCII letters for most of the words.
The default "spellfile.vim" plugin uses this autocommand, if you define your
autocommand afterwards you may want to use ":au! SpellFileMissing" to overrule
it. If you define your autocommand before the plugin is loaded it will notice
this and not do anything.
*E797*
Note that the SpellFileMissing autocommand must not change or destroy the
buffer the user was editing.
==============================================================================
4. Spell file format *spell-file-format*
This is the format of the files that are used by the person who creates and
maintains a word list.
Note that we avoid the word "dictionary" here. That is because the goal of
spell checking differs from writing a dictionary (as in the book). For
spelling we need a list of words that are OK, thus should not be highlighted.
Person and company names will not appear in a dictionary, but do appear in a
word list. And some old words are rarely used while they are common
misspellings. These do appear in a dictionary but not in a word list.
There are two formats: A straight list of words and a list using affix
compression. The files with affix compression are used by Myspell (Mozilla
and OpenOffice.org). This requires two files, one with .aff and one with .dic
extension.
FORMAT OF STRAIGHT WORD LIST *spell-wordlist-format*
The words must appear one per line. That is all that is required.
Additionally the following items are recognized:
- Empty and blank lines are ignored.
# comment ~
- Lines starting with a # are ignored (comment lines).
/encoding=utf-8 ~
- A line starting with "/encoding=", before any word, specifies the encoding
of the file. After the second '=' comes an encoding name. This tells Vim
to setup conversion from the specified encoding to 'encoding'. Thus you can
use one word list for several target encodings.
/regions=usca ~
- A line starting with "/regions=" specifies the region names that are
supported. Each region name must be two ASCII letters. The first one is
region 1. Thus "/regions=usca" has region 1 "us" and region 2 "ca".
In an addition word list the region names should be equal to the main word
list!
- Other lines starting with '/' are reserved for future use. The ones that
are not recognized are ignored. You do get a warning message, so that you
know something won't work.
- A "/" may follow the word with the following items:
= Case must match exactly.
? Rare word.
! Bad (wrong) word.
digit A region in which the word is valid. If no regions are
specified the word is valid in all regions.
Example:
# This is an example word list comment
/encoding=latin1 encoding of the file
/regions=uscagb regions "us", "ca" and "gb"
example word for all regions
blah/12 word for regions "us" and "ca"
vim/! bad word
Campbell/?3 rare word in region 3 "gb"
's mornings/= keep-case word
Note that when "/=" is used the same word with all upper-case letters is not
accepted. This is different from a word with mixed case that is automatically
marked as keep-case, those words may appear in all upper-case letters.
FORMAT WITH .AFF AND .DIC FILES *aff-dic-format*
There are two files: the basic word list and an affix file. The affix file
specifies settings for the language and can contain affixes. The affixes are
used to modify the basic words to get the full word list. This significantly
reduces the number of words, especially for a language like Polish. This is
called affix compression.
The basic word list and the affix file are combined with the ":mkspell"
command and results in a binary spell file. All the preprocessing has been
done, thus this file loads fast. The binary spell file format is described in
the source code (src/spell.c). But only developers need to know about it.
The preprocessing also allows us to take the Myspell language files and modify
them before the Vim word list is made. The tools for this can be found in the
"src/spell" directory.
The format for the affix and word list files is based on what Myspell uses
(the spell checker of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org). A description can be found
here:
http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/affix.readme ~
Note that affixes are case sensitive, this isn't obvious from the description.
Vim supports quite a few extras. They are described below |spell-affix-vim|.
Attempts have been made to keep this compatible with other spell checkers, so
that the same files can often be used. One other project that offers more
than Myspell is Hunspell ( http://hunspell.sf.net ).
WORD LIST FORMAT *spell-dic-format*
A short example, with line numbers:
1 1234 ~
2 aan ~
3 Als ~
4 Etten-Leur ~
5 et al. ~
6 's-Gravenhage ~
7 's-Gravenhaags ~
8 # word that differs between regions ~
9 kado/1 ~
10 cadeau/2 ~
11 TCP,IP ~
12 /the S affix may add a 's' ~
13 bedel/S ~
The first line contains the number of words. Vim ignores it, but you do get
an error message if it's not there. *E760*
What follows is one word per line. White space at the end of the line is
ignored, all other white space matters. The encoding is specified in the
affix file |spell-SET|.
Comment lines start with '#' or '/'. See the example lines 8 and 12. Note
that putting a comment after a word is NOT allowed:
someword # comment that causes an error! ~
After the word there is an optional slash and flags. Most of these flags are
letters that indicate the affixes that can be used with this word. These are
specified with SFX and PFX lines in the .aff file, see |spell-SFX| and
|spell-PFX|. Vim allows using other flag types with the FLAG item in the
affix file |spell-FLAG|.
When the word only has lower-case letters it will also match with the word
starting with an upper-case letter.
When the word includes an upper-case letter, this means the upper-case letter
is required at this position. The same word with a lower-case letter at this
position will not match. When some of the other letters are upper-case it will
not match either.
The word with all upper-case characters will always be OK,
word list matches does not match ~
als als Als ALS ALs AlS aLs aLS
Als Als ALS als ALs AlS aLs aLS
ALS ALS als Als ALs AlS aLs aLS
AlS AlS ALS als Als ALs aLs aLS
The KEEPCASE affix ID can be used to specifically match a word with identical
case only, see below |spell-KEEPCASE|.
Note: in line 5 to 7 non-word characters are used. You can include any
character in a word. When checking the text a word still only matches when it
appears with a non-word character before and after it. For Myspell a word
starting with a non-word character probably won't work.
In line 12 the word "TCP/IP" is defined. Since the slash has a special
meaning the comma is used instead. This is defined with the SLASH item in the
affix file, see |spell-SLASH|. Note that without this SLASH item the word
will be "TCP,IP".
AFFIX FILE FORMAT *spell-aff-format* *spell-affix-vim*
*spell-affix-comment*
Comment lines in the .aff file start with a '#':
# comment line ~
Items with a fixed number of arguments can be followed by a comment. But only
if none of the arguments can contain white space. The comment must start with
a "#" character. Example:
KEEPCASE = # fix case for words with this flag ~
ENCODING *spell-SET*
The affix file can be in any encoding that is supported by "iconv". However,
in some cases the current locale should also be set properly at the time
|:mkspell| is invoked. Adding FOL/LOW/UPP lines removes this requirement
|spell-FOL|.
The encoding should be specified before anything where the encoding matters.
The encoding applies both to the affix file and the dictionary file. It is
done with a SET line:
SET utf-8 ~
The encoding can be different from the value of the 'encoding' option at the
time ":mkspell" is used. Vim will then convert everything to 'encoding' and
generate a spell file for 'encoding'. If some of the used characters to not
fit in 'encoding' you will get an error message.
*spell-affix-mbyte*
When using a multi-byte encoding it's possible to use more different affix
flags. But Myspell doesn't support that, thus you may not want to use it
anyway. For compatibility use an 8-bit encoding.
INFORMATION
These entries in the affix file can be used to add information to the spell
file. There are no restrictions on the format, but they should be in the
right encoding.
*spell-NAME* *spell-VERSION* *spell-HOME*
*spell-AUTHOR* *spell-EMAIL* *spell-COPYRIGHT*
NAME Name of the language
VERSION 1.0.1 with fixes
HOME http://www.myhome.eu
AUTHOR John Doe
EMAIL john AT Doe DOT net
COPYRIGHT LGPL
These fields are put in the .spl file as-is. The |:spellinfo| command can be
used to view the info.
*:spellinfo* *:spelli*
:spelli[nfo] Display the information for the spell file(s) used for
the current buffer.
CHARACTER TABLES
*spell-affix-chars*
When using an 8-bit encoding the affix file should define what characters are
word characters. This is because the system where ":mkspell" is used may not
support a locale with this encoding and isalpha() won't work. For example
when using "cp1250" on Unix.
*E761* *E762* *spell-FOL*
*spell-LOW* *spell-UPP*
Three lines in the affix file are needed. Simplistic example:
FOL áëñ ~
LOW áëñ ~
UPP ÁËÑ ~
All three lines must have exactly the same number of characters.
The "FOL" line specifies the case-folded characters. These are used to
compare words while ignoring case. For most encodings this is identical to
the lower case line.
The "LOW" line specifies the characters in lower-case. Mostly it's equal to
the "FOL" line.
The "UPP" line specifies the characters with upper-case. That is, a character
is upper-case where it's different from the character at the same position in
"FOL".
An exception is made for the German sharp s ß. The upper-case version is
"SS". In the FOL/LOW/UPP lines it should be included, so that it's recognized
as a word character, but use the ß character in all three.
ASCII characters should be omitted, Vim always handles these in the same way.
When the encoding is UTF-8 no word characters need to be specified.
*E763*
Vim allows you to use spell checking for several languages in the same file.
You can list them in the 'spelllang' option. As a consequence all spell files
for the same encoding must use the same word characters, otherwise they can't
be combined without errors.
If you get an E763 warning that the word tables differ you need to update your
".spl" spell files. If you downloaded the files, get the latest version of
all spell files you use. If you are only using one, e.g., German, then also
download the recent English spell files. Otherwise generate the .spl file
again with |:mkspell|. If you still get errors check the FOL, LOW and UPP
lines in the used .aff files.
The XX.ascii.spl spell file generated with the "-ascii" argument will not
contain the table with characters, so that it can be combine with spell files
for any encoding. The .add.spl files also do not contain the table.
MID-WORD CHARACTERS
*spell-midword*
Some characters are only to be considered word characters if they are used in
between two ordinary word characters. An example is the single quote: It is
often used to put text in quotes, thus it can't be recognized as a word
character, but when it appears in between word characters it must be part of
the word. This is needed to detect a spelling error such as they'are. That
should be they're, but since "they" and "are" are words themselves that would
go unnoticed.
These characters are defined with MIDWORD in the .aff file. Example:
MIDWORD '- ~
FLAG TYPES *spell-FLAG*
Flags are used to specify the affixes that can be used with a word and for
other properties of the word. Normally single-character flags are used. This
limits the number of possible flags, especially for 8-bit encodings. The FLAG
item can be used if more affixes are to be used. Possible values:
FLAG long use two-character flags
FLAG num use numbers, from 1 up to 65000
FLAG caplong use one-character flags without A-Z and two-character
flags that start with A-Z
With "FLAG num" the numbers in a list of affixes need to be separated with a
comma: "234,2143,1435". This method is inefficient, but useful if the file is
generated with a program.
When using "caplong" the two-character flags all start with a capital: "Aa",
"B1", "BB", etc. This is useful to use one-character flags for the most
common items and two-character flags for uncommon items.
Note: When using utf-8 only characters up to 65000 may be used for flags.
Note: even when using "num" or "long" the number of flags available to
compounding and prefixes is limited to about 250.
AFFIXES
*spell-PFX* *spell-SFX*
The usual PFX (prefix) and SFX (suffix) lines are supported (see the Myspell
documentation or the Aspell manual:
http://aspell.net/man-html/Affix-Compression.html).
Summary:
SFX L Y 2 ~