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How to Spell-Check the Documentation

Installing Aspell

GNU Aspell is available in the default repositories of most Linux and Unix distributions, so installation should be easy. To install Aspell on Unix/Linux systems use a package manager on your OS.

For example... Ubuntu * apt-get install aspell OS X * Using Homebrew * brew install aspell

Setting up Aspell "word list" for Islandora & ISLE

  • Check if you already have an existing Aspell "word list" called ".aspell.en.pws" in your home directory.
  • Note: that this file starts with a "period" and my be hidden by default in your OS.
  • Back up existing "~/.aspell.en.pws" file if you want to preserve data, or skip this step if you are OK with overwriting existing data.
  • Go to the ISLE documentation repository.
  • Copy the current Aspell "word list" (.aspell.en.pws) that was created for the ISLE/Islandora project from the docs directory into your home directory.
  • Note: Make sure to back up any existing ".aspell.en.pws" before copying if you want to avoid losing your previous word list data.

Running Aspell

Manually running Aspell on a single file

aspell check --dont-backup example.md

Batch running Aspell on all .md files

for f in $(find . -iname '*.md'); do aspell check --dont-backup $f; done;

Verifying changes

  • Since we are using the Aspell --dont-backup flag, Aspell will make changes to the files themselves.
  • We can then use git status and git diff file_name to verify what was changed by Aspell before committing changes back to the repository.

Interactive commands

Common interactive commands used: i = Ignore a word. I = Ignore all occurrences of a word in the current file. a = add word to Aspell "word list" (~/.aspell.en.pws). 1 to 10 = Used to select a suggested word to replace selected word.

Updating Aspell "word list" after checking spellings

  • Copy the existing "~/.aspell.en.pws" file in your home directory to the ISLE documentation repository.
  • Commit the change(s) to the Aspell word list file.
  • Submit a pull request with your changes to be considered by the project committers.