On 4/18/25 8:01 AM, Marvin Jones via tde-users wrote:

I use kwrite to create/build fortune file. I see what you see. I use the spell checking in kwrite, and then I use $ aspell -c <filename> from the command line.

That is part of what confuses me. TDE should be tapping into the underlying spell engine. Should be transparent. I believe most Linux software functions that way. Why does TDE routinely not flag misspelled words and other Linux tools do this correctly? My first guess is this might be circular reasoning --- we use TDE and presume the problem is TDE.

Yes, I once asked where kwrite's spell checker saves the user (a)dded words. Crickets. I need to clean it up due to fat-fingering the keyboard from time-to-time.

I edited a document in Kate/KWrite and intentionally added a spell check exception. The result was two new files:

$HOME/.aspell.en.prepl $HOME/.aspell.en.pws

Looks like the prepl file (REPLacement dictionary) contains the user's preferred dictionary language preference and a list of common misspellings and corrections. Looks like the pws (personal word list) file duplicates the language information and contains a list of additions.

Digging further indicates the user can create /etc/aspell.conf with a directive like the following:

home-dir $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aspell/

That would configure ASpell to create custom dictionary files in $HOME/.config/aspell.

The same can be done with the ASPELL_CONF environment variable.

Nominal reading implies my charge of poor spell checking might be my lack of understanding how ASpell works. I'll look into that more before continuing to blame TDE.

Comforting to see the personal dictionary is global in $HOME rather than $TDEHOME. This affirms TDE is using the underlying engine.

Yet adding spell check exceptions has little to do with not flagging obviously misspelled words. A possible presumption is the underlying engine does not contain the correct spellings and is not a TDE specific issue.

A more fitting presumption is the "default" spell engine might not be what we think. I presume "default" is dependent on the user's Regional configuration and locale environment variables, but perhaps something gets lost or mangled. In that respect I configured KControl to use a specific language dictionary rather than "ASpell Default."

I am hoping this minor change resolves the problem. My hopeful guess is the unflagged misspellings are caused by using an incorrect "default" dictionary.

I am going to watch when TDE fails to flag an obviously misspelled word. Then copy the text into a different text editor and note the results.

I spend much time writing. Difficult to ignore this kind of quirk. The lack of inline spell checking doesn't help my use case, but I can live with manually checking. I just want to know the spell check engine is working correctly.

Honestly, i think that the spell checking on every application is a little old. Today is normal write in two or three languages at same time, but the apps only can work with one at same time.

In the short time I have been investigating, looks like multi-language support is part of the ASpell design. I found several discussions online with people trying to configure ASpell with multiple languages. There are man pages installed, but looks like the docs are found online here:

http://aspell.net/