Subject: Re: bug#6539: ispell-complete-word looks for wrong file (at least on w32)

From: Agustin Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:38:26 +0200

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 11:18:17AM +0200, Lennart Borgman wrote:
> Calling ispell-complete-word on w32 gives the error
> 
>   grep error: grep: /usr/dict/words: No such file or directory
> 
> This is wrong for w32.
> 
> I am using aspell. It also seems like the function above does not know
> about aspell.

Hi, Lennart, 

`ispell-complete-word' does not use spellchecking dictionaries but
plain wordlists to guess completions, so it does not depend on spellchecking
engines. Plain wordlist to use can be customized by means of 
`ispell-alternate-dictionary' variable. 

Do you have a plain wordlist installed? It has been considered a nearly 
standard part of any UNIX-like system (at least a minimal american wordlist)
whose default location is currently /usr/share/dict/words (or previously  
/usr/dict/words). While this does not apply to w32, any plain wordlist at
any of the locations tried in `ispell-alternate-dictionary' should work, as
well as in any other location as long as `ispell-alternate-dictionary' is
modified.

See `lookup-words' along with `ispell-complete-word' for more info.
`ispell-alternate-dictionary' docstring speaks about 'dictionary' instead 
of word-list dictionary as `lookup-words' does. Cannot commit now but will
try to put this more clear soon.

I think that this bug report can be closed or renamed to something like 
'Improve `ispell-alternate-dictionary' docstring'.

Cheers,

-- 
Agustin