[Dict-common-dev] Draft for registering aspell dicts for use under emacs

[Agustín Martín Domingo]

Hi all,

This is a draft of the text to go to the policy about how to register 
aspell dictionaries so they work under emacs. Still preliminary, 
comments are welcome

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      ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Registering aspell dictionaries for use from within emacs

    The dictionaries-common system resets the contents of the emacs
    ispell-dictionary-alist variable in ispell.el to redefine it after the
    really installed dictionaries. For that reason, aspell dictionaries 
cannot
    trust that the values originally there are still present. A registration
    system similar to that provided for ispell dictionaries is available for
    aspell dictionaries. Note that for similar emacsen names the ispell 
entry
    will override the aspell entry, so you have to take care that your 
aspell
    dictionary will work with the ispell entry. To use this system, 
please see
    the following guidelines

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     Add an info file

    An info file similar to that described in the Section called The info
    file must be installed as
    /var/lib/dictionaries-common/aspell/<package-name>, containing one entry
    for each aspell dictionary it provides.

    Emacsen-Name must be the same of the equivalent ispell dictionary.
    Otherwise things like ;; ispell-local-dictionary: "brasileiro" in the
    spell checked file will not work similarly under ispell and aspell. As
    told before you must make sure that it will work with an info file entry
    similar to the ispell one.

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     Modify the maintainer scripts

    Add a call to update-dictcommon-aspell to your postinst

if [ "$1" = "configure" ] ; then 

   [ -x /usr/sbin/update-dictcommon-aspell ] && 
/usr/sbin/update-dictcommon-aspell
 

fi

    and to your postrm

case "$1" in abort-install|purge|remove) 

   [ -x /usr/sbin/update-dictcommon-aspell ] && 
/usr/sbin/update-dictcommon-aspell
 

esac 



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     Set the right relationships

    If you want to use this system you must make your aspell dictionary
    depend on dictionaries-common (>= 0.9.1).

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     Make sure your dict will work with the ispell name

    When aspell is selected for use from emacs, ispell.el will call aspell
    -d your_hashname, where your_hashname is the value of the Hash-Name 
field
    in the info file entry for your dictionary. Since this must work 
with the
    corresponding ispell name, make sure that something like
    your_hashname.alias or a symlink to the .multi file as 
your_hashname.multi
    is present in the aspell lib dir.

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     installdeb-aspell: a debhelper like helper for aspell dictionaries

    A debhelper like script is provided to make even easier the steps above.
    This helper is named installdeb-aspell and relies in the existence of an
    info-aspell file conforming to the specified in the Section called The
    info file, and named as for other debhelper files (.docs, .manpages, 
...).
    Calling it in debian/rules will install the aspell info file and create
    postinst and postrm debhelper snippets to be installed by debhelper. 
Note,
    that, unlike installdeb-{ispell,wordlist} this script does not know 
about
    debconf so you should install your debconf stuff, if any, in the usual
    way.

    If you use this script you must make your package build depend on
    dictionaries-common-dev (>= 0.9.1).

      ----------------------------------------------------------------------


-- 
=====================================================================
Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid,
(U. Politecnica de Madrid)  tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554,
email:agmartin@aq.upm.es, http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html