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hunspell(4)							   hunspell(4)

NAME
       hunspell - format of Hunspell dictionaries and affix files

DESCRIPTION
       Hunspell(1) Hunspell requires two files to define the way a language is
       being spell checked: a dictionary file containing words and  applicable
       flags,  and  an	affix file that specifies how these flags wil controll
       spell checking.	An optional file is the personal dictionary file.

Dictionary file
       A dictionary file (*.dic) contains a list of words, one per line.   The
       first  line of the dictionaries (except personal dictionaries) contains
       the approximate word count (for optimal hash memory  size).  Each  word
       may  optionally	be  followed  by  a slash ("/") and one or more flags,
       which represents the word attributes, for example affixes.

       Note: Dictionary words can contain also slashes when escaped  like   ""
       syntax.

Personal dictionary file
       Personal	 dictionaries  are  simple  word  lists. Asterisk at the first
       character position signs prohibition.  A second	word  separated	 by  a
       slash sets the affixation.

	      foo
	      Foo/Simpson
	      *bar

       In  this	 example, "foo" and "Foo" are personal words, plus Foo will be
       recognized with affixes of Simpson (Foo's etc.) and bar is a  forbidden
       word.

Short example
       Dictionary file:

	      3
	      hello
	      try/B
	      work/AB

       The flags B and A specify attributes of these words.

       Affix file:

	      SET UTF-8
	      TRY esianrtolcdugmphbyfvkwzESIANRTOLCDUGMPHBYFVKWZ'

	      REP 2
	      REP f ph
	      REP ph f

	      PFX A Y 1
	      PFX A 0 re .

	      SFX B Y 2
	      SFX B 0 ed [^y]
	      SFX B y ied y

       In  the	affix  file,  prefix A and suffix B have been defined.	Flag A
       defines a `re-' prefix. Class B defines two  `-ed'  suffixes.  First  B
       suffix  can  be added to a word if the last character of the word isn't
       `y'.  Second suffix can be added to the words terminated with an `y'.

       All accepted words with this  dictionary	 and  affix  combination  are:
       "hello", "try", "tried", "work", "worked", "rework", "reworked".

AFFIX FILE GENERAL OPTIONS
       Hunspell	 source distribution contains more than 80 examples for option
       usage.

       SET encoding
	      Set character encoding of words and morphemes in affix and  dic‐
	      tionary  files.  Possible values: UTF-8, ISO8859-1 - ISO8859-10,
	      ISO8859-13  -  ISO8859-15,  KOI8-R,  KOI8-U,   microsoft-cp1251,
	      ISCII-DEVANAGARI.

	      SET UTF-8

       FLAG value
	      Set  flag type. Default type is the extended ASCII (8-bit) char‐
	      acter.  `UTF-8' parameter sets UTF-8 encoded  Unicode  character
	      flags.   The `long' value sets the double extended ASCII charac‐
	      ter flag type, the `num' sets the decimal number flag type. Dec‐
	      imal flags numbered from 1 to 65000, and in flag fields are sep‐
	      arated by comma.	BUG: UTF-8 flag type doesn't work on ARM plat‐
	      form.

	      FLAG long

       COMPLEXPREFIXES
	      Set  twofold  prefix stripping (but single suffix stripping) eg.
	      for morphologically complex languages with right-to-left writing
	      system.

       LANG langcode
	      Set  language  code for language specific functions of Hunspell.
	      Use it to activate special casing of Azeri (LANG az) and Turkish
	      (LANG tr).

       IGNORE characters
	      Sets  characters	to  ignore dictionary words, affixes and input
	      words.  Useful for optional characters, as Arabic	 (harakat)  or
	      Hebrew  (niqqud) diacritical marks (see tests/ignore.* test dic‐
	      tionary in Hunspell distribution).

       AF number_of_flag_vector_aliases

       AF flag_vector
	      Hunspell can substitute affix flag sets with ordinal numbers  in
	      affix rules (alias compression, see makealias tool). First exam‐
	      ple with alias compression:

	      3
	      hello
	      try/1
	      work/2

       AF definitions in the affix file:

	      AF 2
	      AF A
	      AF AB

       It is equivalent of the following dic file:

	      3
	      hello
	      try/A
	      work/AB

       See also tests/alias* examples of the source distribution.

       Note I: If affix file contains the FLAG parameter, define it before the
       AF definitions.

       Note II: Use makealias utility in Hunspell distribution to compress aff
       and dic files.

       AM number_of_morphological_aliases

       AM morphological_fields
	      Hunspell can substitute also  morphological  data	 with  ordinal
	      numbers  in  affix  rules (alias compression).  See tests/alias*
	      examples.

AFFIX FILE OPTIONS FOR SUGGESTION
       Suggestion parameters  can  optimize  the  default  n-gram  (similarity
       search in the dictionary words based on the common 1, 2, 3, 4-character
       length common character-sequences), character swap and deletion sugges‐
       tions  of Hunspell.  REP is suggested to fix the typical and especially
       bad language specific bugs, because the REP suggestions have the	 high‐
       est  priority  in the suggestion list.  PHONE is for languages with not
       pronunciation based orthography.

       KEY characters_separated_by_vertical_line_optionally
	      Hunspell searches and suggests words with one different  charac‐
	      ter  replaced  by a neighbor KEY character. Not neighbor charac‐
	      ters in KEY string separated by vertical line characters.	  Sug‐
	      gested KEY parameters for QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts:

	      KEY qwertyuiop|asdfghjkl|zxcvbnm
	      KEY pyfgcrl|aeouidhtns|qjkxbmwvz

       Using  the first QWERTY layout, Hunspell suggests "nude" and "node" for
       "*nide". A character may have more neighbors, too:

	      KEY qwertzuop|yxcvbnm|qaw|say|wse|dsx|sy|edr|fdc|dx|rft|gfv|fc|tgz|hgb|gv|zhu|jhn|hb|uji|kjm|jn|iko|lkm

       TRY characters
	      Hunspell can suggest right word forms, when they differ from the
	      bad  input  word	by  one TRY character. The parameter of TRY is
	      case sensitive.

       NOSUGGEST flag
	      Words signed with NOSUGGEST flag are not	suggested  (but	 still
	      accepted	when  typed  correctly).  Proposed flag for vulgar and
	      obscene words (see also SUBSTANDARD).

       MAXCPDSUGS num
	      Set max. number of suggested compound words  generated  by  com‐
	      pound  rules.  The number of the suggested compound words may be
	      greater from the same 1-character distance type.

       MAXNGRAMSUGS num
	      Set max. number of n-gram suggestions. Value 0 switches off  the
	      n-gram suggestions (see also MAXDIFF).

       MAXDIFF [0-10]
	      Set  the similarity factor for the n-gram based suggestions (5 =
	      default value; 0 = fewer n-gram suggestions, but min.  1;	 10  =
	      MAXNGRAMSUGS n-gram suggestions).

       ONLYMAXDIFF
	      Remove  all  bad n-gram suggestions (default mode keeps one, see
	      MAXDIFF).

       NOSPLITSUGS
	      Disable word suggestions with spaces.

       SUGSWITHDOTS
	      Add dot(s) to suggestions, if input word terminates  in  dot(s).
	      (Not for OpenOffice.org dictionaries, because OpenOffice.org has
	      an automatic dot expansion mechanism.)

       REP number_of_replacement_definitions

       REP what replacement
	      This table specifies modifications to try first.	First  REP  is
	      the  header of this table and one or more REP data line are fol‐
	      lowing it.  With this table,  Hunspell  can  suggest  the	 right
	      forms  for the typical spelling mistakes when the incorrect form
	      differs by more than 1 letter from the right form.   The	search
	      string supports the regex boundary signs (^ and $).  For example
	      a possible English replacement table definition to  handle  mis‐
	      spelled consonants:

	      REP 5
	      REP f ph
	      REP ph f
	      REP tion$ shun
	      REP ^cooccurr co-occurr
	      REP ^alot$ a_lot

       Note  I:	 It's  very useful to define replacements for the most typical
       one-character mistakes, too: with REP you can add higher priority to  a
       subset of the TRY suggestions (suggestion list begins with the REP sug‐
       gestions).

       Note II: Suggesting separated words, specify spaces with underlines:

	      REP 1
	      REP onetwothree one_two_three

       Note III: Replacement table can be used for a  stricter	compound  word
       checking with the option CHECKCOMPOUNDREP.

       MAP number_of_map_definitions

       MAP string_of_related_chars_or_parenthesized_character_sequences
	      We  can  define language-dependent information on characters and
	      character sequences that	should	be  considered	related	 (i.e.
	      nearer than other chars not in the set) in the affix file (.aff)
	      by a map table.  With this table, Hunspell can suggest the right
	      forms  for  words,  which incorrectly choose the wrong letter or
	      letter groups from a related set more than once in a  word  (see
	      REP).

	      For  example a possible mapping could be for the German umlauted
	      ü versus the regular u; the  word	 Frühstück  really  should  be
	      written with umlauted u's and not regular ones

	      MAP 1
	      MAP uü

       Use parenthesized groups for character sequences (eg. for composed Uni‐
       code characters):

	      MAP 3
	      MAP ß(ss)	 (character sequence)
	      MAP fi(fi)	 ("fi" compatibility characters for Unicode fi ligature)
	      MAP (ó)o	 (composed Unicode character: ó with bottom dot)

       PHONE number_of_phone_definitions

       PHONE what replacement
	      PHONE uses a table-driven phonetic transcription algorithm  bor‐
	      rowed from Aspell. It is useful for languages with not pronunci‐
	      ation based orthography. You can add a full alphabet  conversion
	      and  other rules for conversion of special letter sequences. For
	      detailed documentation see  http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-
	      Code.html.   Note:  Multibyte  UTF-8  characters have not worked
	      with bracket expression yet. Dash expression  has	 signed	 bytes
	      and not UTF-8 characters yet.

       WARN flag
	      This  flag  is for rare words, wich are also often spelling mis‐
	      takes, see option -r of command line Hunspell and FORBIDWARN.

       FORBIDWARN
	      Words with flag WARN aren't accepted by the spell checker	 using
	      this parameter.

OPTIONS FOR COMPOUNDING
       BREAK number_of_break_definitions

       BREAK character_or_character_sequence
	      Define  new  break  points  for breaking words and checking word
	      parts separately. Use ^ and $ to delete characters  at  end  and
	      start  of the word. Rationale: useful for compounding with join‐
	      ing character or strings (for example,  hyphen  in  English  and
	      German  or hyphen and n-dash in Hungarian). Dashes are often bad
	      break points for tokenization, because compounds with dashes may
	      contain  not  valid parts, too.)	With BREAK, Hunspell can check
	      both side of these compounds, breaking the words at  dashes  and
	      n-dashes:

	      BREAK 2
	      BREAK -
	      BREAK --	  # n-dash

       Breaking	 are recursive, so foo-bar, bar-foo and foo-foo--bar-bar would
       be valid compounds.  Note: The default word break of Hunspell is equiv‐
       alent of the following BREAK definition:

	      BREAK 3
	      BREAK -
	      BREAK ^-
	      BREAK -$

       Hunspell	 doesn't  accept  the  "-word" and "word-" forms by this BREAK
       definition:

	      BREAK 1
	      BREAK -

       Switching off the default values:

	      BREAK 0

       Note II: COMPOUNDRULE is better for handling dashes and other  compound
       joining	characters  or	character  strings.  Use BREAK, if you want to
       check words with dashes or other joining characters  and	 there	is  no
       time  or	 possibility  to  describe  precise  compound  rules with COM‐
       POUNDRULE (COMPOUNDRULE handles only the suffixation of the  last  word
       part of a compound word).

       Note  III:  For command line spell checking of words with extra charac‐
       ters, set WORDCHARS parameters: WORDCHARS --- (see tests/break.*) exam‐
       ple

       COMPOUNDRULE number_of_compound_definitions

       COMPOUNDRULE compound_pattern
	      Define  custom  compound patterns with a regex-like syntax.  The
	      first COMPOUNDRULE is a header with the number of the  following
	      COMPOUNDRULE  definitions.  Compound  patterns  consist compound
	      flags, parentheses, star and question mark  meta	characters.  A
	      flag  followed  by  a  `*'  matches a word sequence of 0 or more
	      matches of words signed with this compound flag.	 A  flag  fol‐
	      lowed  by	 a  `?' matches a word sequence of 0 or 1 matches of a
	      word signed with	this  compound	flag.	See  tests/compound*.*
	      examples.

	      Note:  en_US  dictionary of OpenOffice.org uses COMPOUNDRULE for
	      ordinal number recognition (1st, 2nd, 11th, 12th,	 22nd,	112th,
	      1000122nd etc.).

	      Note  II:	 In the case of long and numerical flag types use only
	      parenthesized flags: (1500)*(2000)?

	      Note III: COMPOUNDRULE flags work completely separately from the
	      compounding  mechanisme  using COMPOUNDFLAG, COMPOUNDBEGIN, etc.
	      compound flags. (Use  these  flags  on  different	 enhtries  for
	      words).

       COMPOUNDMIN num
	      Minimum  length of words used for compounding.  Default value is
	      3 letters.

       COMPOUNDFLAG flag
	      Words signed with COMPOUNDFLAG may be in compound words  (except
	      when  word  shorter than COMPOUNDMIN). Affixes with COMPOUNDFLAG
	      also permits compounding of affixed words.

       COMPOUNDBEGIN flag
	      Words signed with COMPOUNDBEGIN (or with a signed affix) may  be
	      first elements in compound words.

       COMPOUNDLAST flag
	      Words  signed  with COMPOUNDLAST (or with a signed affix) may be
	      last elements in compound words.

       COMPOUNDMIDDLE flag
	      Words signed with COMPOUNDMIDDLE (or with a signed affix) may be
	      middle elements in compound words.

       ONLYINCOMPOUND flag
	      Suffixes	signed	with ONLYINCOMPOUND flag may be only inside of
	      compounds (Fuge-elements in German, fogemorphemes	 in  Swedish).
	      ONLYINCOMPOUND  flag works also with words (see tests/onlyincom‐
	      pound.*).	 Note: also valuable to flag compounding  parts	 which
	      are not correct as a word by itself.

       COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG flag
	      Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds, suffixes are
	      allowed at the end of compounds by default.  Affixes  with  COM‐
	      POUNDPERMITFLAG may be inside of compounds.

       COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG flag
	      Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       COMPOUNDROOT flag
	      COMPOUNDROOT  flag signs the compounds in the dictionary (Now it
	      is used only in the Hungarian language specific code).

       COMPOUNDWORDMAX number
	      Set maximum word count in a compound word.  (Default  is	unlim‐
	      ited.)

       CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP
	      Forbid word duplication in compounds (e.g. foofoo).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDREP
	      Forbid  compounding, if the (usually bad) compound word may be a
	      non compound word with a REP fault. Useful  for  languages  with
	      `compound friendly' orthography.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE
	      Forbid upper case characters at word boundaries in compounds.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE
	      Forbid  compounding,  if compound word contains triple repeating
	      letters (e.g. foo|ox or xo|oof). Bug: missing multi-byte charac‐
	      ter  support in UTF-8 encoding (works only for 7-bit ASCII char‐
	      acters).

       SIMPLIFIEDTRIPLE
	      Allow simplified 2-letter forms of the  compounds	 forbidden  by
	      CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE.  It's useful for Swedish and Norwegian (and
	      for the old German orthography: Schiff|fahrt -> Schiffahrt).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN number_of_checkcompoundpattern_definitions

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN endchars[/flag] beginchars[/flag] [replacement]
	      Forbid compounding, if the first word in the compound ends  with
	      endchars,	 and next word begins with beginchars and (optionally)
	      they have the requested flags.  The optional replacement parame‐
	      ter allows simplified compound form.

	      The  special  "endchars" pattern 0 (zero) limits the rule to the
	      unmodified stems (stems and stems with zero affixes):

	      CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN 0/x /y

       Note: COMPOUNDMIN doesn't work correctly with the compound word	alter‐
       nation, so it may need to set COMPOUNDMIN to lower value.

       FORCEUCASE flag
	      Last  word  part of a compound with flag FORCEUCASE forces capi‐
	      talization of the whole compound word. Eg. Dutch	word  "straat"
	      (street)	with FORCEUCASE flags will allowed only in capitalized
	      compound forms, according to the Dutch spelling rules for proper
	      names.

       COMPOUNDSYLLABLE max_syllable vowels
	      Need  for special compounding rules in Hungarian.	 First parame‐
	      ter is the maximum syllable number, that may be in  a  compound,
	      if  words	 in  compounds	are more than COMPOUNDWORDMAX.	Second
	      parameter is the list of vowels (for calculating syllables).

       SYLLABLENUM flags
	      Need for special compounding rules in Hungarian.

AFFIX FILE OPTIONS FOR AFFIX CREATION
       PFX flag cross_product number

       PFX flag stripping prefix [condition [morphological_fields...]]

       SFX flag cross_product number

       SFX flag stripping suffix [condition [morphological_fields...]]
	      An affix is either a prefix or a suffix attached to  root	 words
	      to  make other words. We can define affix classes with arbitrary
	      number affix rules.  Affix classes are signed with affix	flags.
	      The  first  line of an affix class definition is the header. The
	      fields of an affix class header:

	      (0) Option name (PFX or SFX)

	      (1) Flag (name of the affix class)

	      (2) Cross product (permission to combine prefixes and suffixes).
	      Possible values: Y (yes) or N (no)

	      (3) Line count of the following rules.

	      Fields of an affix rules:

	      (0) Option name

	      (1) Flag

	      (2) stripping characters from beginning (at prefix rules) or end
	      (at suffix rules) of the word

	      (3) affix (optionally with flags of continuation classes,	 sepa‐
	      rated by a slash)

	      (4) condition.

	      Zero stripping or affix are indicated by zero. Zero condition is
	      indicated by dot.	 Condition is a	 simplified,  regular  expres‐
	      sion-like	 pattern,  which  must	be met before the affix can be
	      applied. (Dot signs an arbitrary character. Characters in braces
	      sign  an	arbitrary  character  from  the character subset. Dash
	      hasn't got special meaning, but circumflex (^)  next  the	 first
	      brace sets the complementer character set.)

	      (5) Optional morphological fields separated by spaces or tabula‐
	      tors.

AFFIX FILE OTHER OPTIONS
       CIRCUMFIX flag
	      Affixes signed with CIRCUMFIX flag may be on a  word  when  this
	      word  also  has a prefix with CIRCUMFIX flag and vice versa (see
	      circumfix.* test files in the source distribution).

       FORBIDDENWORD flag
	      This flag signs forbidden word form. Because affixed  forms  are
	      also  forbidden,	we  can	 subtract  a  subset  from  set of the
	      accepted affixed and compound words.  Note:  usefull  to	forbid
	      erroneous words, generated by the compounding mechanism.

       FULLSTRIP
	      With  FULLSTRIP,	affix rules can strip full words, not only one
	      less characters, before adding the affixes, see fullstrip.* test
	      files in the source distribution).  Note: conditions may be word
	      length without FULLSTRIP, too.

       KEEPCASE flag
	      Forbid uppercased and capitalized forms  of  words  signed  with
	      KEEPCASE	flags.	Useful for special orthographies (measurements
	      and currency often keep their  case  in  uppercased  texts)  and
	      writing  systems	(e.g.  keeping	lower case of IPA characters).
	      Also valuable for words erroneously written in the wrong case.

	      Note: With CHECKSHARPS declaration, words with sharp s and KEEP‐
	      CASE  flag  may  be  capitalized	and uppercased, but uppercased
	      forms of these words may not contain sharp s, only SS. See  ger‐
	      mancompounding  example  in  the tests directory of the Hunspell
	      distribution.

       ICONV number_of_ICONV_definitions

       ICONV pattern pattern2
	      Define input conversion table.  Note: useful to convert one type
	      of quote to another one, or change ligature.

       OCONV number_of_OCONV_definitions

       OCONV pattern pattern2
	      Define output conversion table.

       LEMMA_PRESENT flag
	      Deprecated. Use "st:" field instead of LEMMA_PRESENT.

       NEEDAFFIX flag
	      This  flag  signs	 virtual  stems	 in the dictionary, words only
	      valid when affixed.   Except,  if	 the  dictionary  word	has  a
	      homonym or a zero affix.	NEEDAFFIX works also with prefixes and
	      prefix + suffix combinations (see tests/pseudoroot5.*).

       PSEUDOROOT flag
	      Deprecated. (Former name of the NEEDAFFIX option.)

       SUBSTANDARD flag
	      SUBSTANDARD flag signs affix rules and dictionary	 words	(allo‐
	      morphs)  not used in morphological generation (and in suggestion
	      in the future versions). See also NOSUGGEST.

       WORDCHARS characters
	      WORDCHARS extends tokenizer of Hunspell command  line  interface
	      with  additional word character. For example, dot, dash, n-dash,
	      numbers, percent sign are word character in Hungarian.

       CHECKSHARPS
	      SS letter pair in uppercased (German) words may  be  upper  case
	      sharp  s	(ß).  Hunspell can handle this special casing with the
	      CHECKSHARPS declaration (see also KEEPCASE flag  and  tests/ger‐
	      mancompounding example) in both spelling and suggestion.

Morphological analysis
       Hunspell's  dictionary items and affix rules may have optional space or
       tabulator separated  morphological  description	fields,	 started  with
       3-character (two letters and a colon) field IDs:

	       word/flags po:noun is:nom

       Example: We define a simple resource with morphological informations, a
       derivative suffix (ds:) and a part of speech category (po:):

       Affix file:

	       SFX X Y 1
	       SFX X 0 able . ds:able

       Dictionary file:

	       drink/X po:verb

       Test file:

	       drink
	       drinkable

       Test:

	       $ analyze test.aff test.dic test.txt
	       > drink
	       analyze(drink) = po:verb
	       stem(drink) = po:verb
	       > drinkable
	       analyze(drinkable) = po:verb ds:able
	       stem(drinkable) = drinkable

       You can see in the example, that the analyzer concatenates the  morpho‐
       logical fields in item and arrangement style.

Optional data fields
       Default	morphological  and other IDs (used in suggestion, stemming and
       morphological generation):

       ph:    Alternative transliteration for better suggestion.  It's	useful
	      for words with foreign pronunciation. (Dictionary based phonetic
	      suggestion.)  For example:

	      Marseille ph:maarsayl

       st:    Stem. Optional: default stem is the dictionary item  in  morpho‐
	      logical  analysis.  Stem field is useful for virtual stems (dic‐
	      tionary words with NEEDAFFIX flag) and morphological  exceptions
	      instead of new, single used morphological rules.

	      feet  st:foot  is:plural
	      mice  st:mouse is:plural
	      teeth st:tooth is:plural

       Word forms with multiple stems need multiple dictionary items:

	      lay po:verb st:lie is:past_2
	      lay po:verb is:present
	      lay po:noun

       al:    Allomorph(s).  A	dictionary item is the stem of its allomorphs.
	      Morphological generation needs stem, allomorph and affix fields.

	      sing al:sang al:sung
	      sang st:sing
	      sung st:sing

       po:    Part of speech category.

       ds:    Derivational suffix(es).	Stemming doesn't  remove  derivational
	      suffixes.	  Morphological generation depends on the order of the
	      suffix fields.

	      In affix rules:

	      SFX Y Y 1
	      SFX Y 0 ly . ds:ly_adj

       In the dictionary:

	      ably st:able ds:ly_adj
	      able al:ably

       is:    Inflectional suffix(es).	All inflectional suffixes are  removed
	      by  stemming.   Morphological generation depends on the order of
	      the suffix fields.

	      feet st:foot is:plural

       ts:    Terminal suffix(es).  Terminal suffix  fields  are  inflectional
	      suffix fields "removed" by additional (not terminal) suffixes.

	      Useful  for  zero	 morphemes  and	 affixes  removed by splitting
	      rules.

	      work/D ts:present

	      SFX D Y 2
	      SFX D   0 ed . is:past_1
	      SFX D   0 ed . is:past_2

       Typical example of the terminal suffix is the zero morpheme of the nom‐
       inative case.

       sp:    Surface  prefix.	Temporary  solution for adding prefixes to the
	      stems and generated word forms. See tests/morph.* example.

       pa:    Parts of the compound  words.  Output  fields  of	 morphological
	      analysis for stemming.

       dp:    Planned: derivational prefix.

       ip:    Planned: inflectional prefix.

       tp:    Planned: terminal prefix.

Twofold suffix stripping
       Ispell's	 original algorithm strips only one suffix. Hunspell can strip
       another one yet (or a plus prefix in COMPLEXPREFIXES mode).

       The twofold suffix stripping is a significant improvement  in  handling
       of  immense  number  of	suffixes, that characterize agglutinative lan‐
       guages.

       A second `s' suffix (affix class Y) will be the continuation  class  of
       the suffix `able' in the following example:

	       SFX Y Y 1
	       SFX Y 0 s .

	       SFX X Y 1
	       SFX X 0 able/Y .

       Dictionary file:

	       drink/X

       Test file:

	       drink
	       drinkable
	       drinkables

       Test:

	       $ hunspell -m -d test <test.txt
	       drink st:drink
	       drinkable st:drink fl:X
	       drinkables st:drink fl:X fl:Y

       Theoretically  with  the twofold suffix stripping needs only the square
       root of the number of suffix rules, compared with a Hunspell  implemen‐
       tation. In our practice, we could have elaborated the Hungarian inflec‐
       tional morphology with twofold suffix stripping.

Extended affix classes
       Hunspell can handle more than 65000 affix classes.  There are three new
       syntax for giving flags in affix and dictionary files.

       FLAG long command sets 2-character flags:

		FLAG long
		SFX Y1 Y 1
		SFX Y1 0 s 1

       Dictionary record with the Y1, Z3, F? flags:

		foo/Y1Z3F?

       FLAG num command sets numerical flags separated by comma:

		FLAG num
		SFX 65000 Y 1
		SFX 65000 0 s 1

       Dictionary example:

		foo/65000,12,2756

       The third one is the Unicode character flags.

Homonyms
       Hunspell's dictionary can contain repeating elements that are homonyms:

	       work/A	 po:verb
	       work/B	 po:noun

       An affix file:

	       SFX A Y 1
	       SFX A 0 s . sf:sg3

	       SFX B Y 1
	       SFX B 0 s . is:plur

       Test file:

	       works

       Test:

	       $ hunspell -d test -m <testwords
	       work st:work po:verb is:sg3
	       work st:work po:noun is:plur

       This  feature also gives a way to forbid illegal prefix/suffix combina‐
       tions.

Prefix--suffix dependencies
       An interesting side-effect of multi-step stripping is, that the	appro‐
       priate  treatment  of circumfixes now comes for free.  For instance, in
       Hungarian, superlatives are formed by simultaneous prefixation of  leg-
       and  suffixation of -bb to the adjective base.  A problem with the one-
       level architecture is that there is no way to render lexical  licensing
       of  particular  prefixes	 and  suffixes	interdependent,	 and therefore
       incorrect forms are recognized as valid,	 i.e.  *legvén	=  leg	+  vén
       `old'.  Until  the introduction of clusters, a special treatment of the
       superlative had to be hardwired in the earlier HunSpell code. This  may
       have  been  legitimate  for  a  single case, but in fact prefix--suffix
       dependences are ubiquitous in category-changing	derivational  patterns
       (cf.  English  payable, non-payable but *non-pay or drinkable, undrink‐
       able but *undrink). In simple words, here, the prefix un- is legitimate
       only  if	 the  base drink is suffixed with -able. If both these patters
       are handled by on-line affix rules and affix rules are checked  against
       the  base only, there is no way to express this dependency and the sys‐
       tem will necessarily over- or undergenerate.

       In next example, suffix class R have got a prefix `continuation'	 class
       (class P).

	      PFX P Y 1
	      PFX P   0 un . [prefix_un]+

	      SFX S Y 1
	      SFX S   0 s . +PL

	      SFX Q Y 1
	      SFX Q   0 s . +3SGV

	      SFX R Y 1
	      SFX R   0 able/PS . +DER_V_ADJ_ABLE

       Dictionary:

	      2
	      drink/RQ	[verb]
	      drink/S	[noun]

       Morphological analysis:

	      > drink
	      drink[verb]
	      drink[noun]
	      > drinks
	      drink[verb]+3SGV
	      drink[noun]+PL
	      > drinkable
	      drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
	      > drinkables
	      drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
	      > undrinkable
	      [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
	      > undrinkables
	      [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
	      > undrink
	      Unknown word.
	      > undrinks
	      Unknown word.

Circumfix
       Conditional  affixes implemented by a continuation class are not enough
       for circumfixes, because a circumfix is one  affix  in  morphology.  We
       also need CIRCUMFIX option for correct morphological analysis.

	      # circumfixes: ~ obligate prefix/suffix combinations
	      # superlative in Hungarian: leg- (prefix) AND -bb (suffix)
	      # nagy, nagyobb, legnagyobb, legeslegnagyobb
	      # (great, greater, greatest, most greatest)

	      CIRCUMFIX X

	      PFX A Y 1
	      PFX A 0 leg/X .

	      PFX B Y 1
	      PFX B 0 legesleg/X .

	      SFX C Y 3
	      SFX C 0 obb . +COMPARATIVE
	      SFX C 0 obb/AX . +SUPERLATIVE
	      SFX C 0 obb/BX . +SUPERSUPERLATIVE

       Dictionary:

	      1
	      nagy/C	[MN]

       Analysis:

	      > nagy
	      nagy[MN]
	      > nagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+COMPARATIVE
	      > legnagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+SUPERLATIVE
	      > legeslegnagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+SUPERSUPERLATIVE

Compounds
       Allowing	 free compounding yields decrease in precision of recognition,
       not to mention stemming and morphological analysis.   Although  lexical
       switches are introduced to license compounding of bases by Ispell, this
       proves not to be restrictive enough. For example:

	      # affix file
	      COMPOUNDFLAG X

	      2
	      foo/X
	      bar/X

       With this resource, foobar and barfoo also are accepted words.

       This has been improved upon with the introduction  of  direction-sensi‐
       tive compounding, i.e., lexical features can specify separately whether
       a base can occur as leftmost or	rightmost  constituent	in  compounds.
       This,  however,	is still insufficient to handle the intricate patterns
       of compounding, not to mention idiosyncratic  (and  language  specific)
       norms of hyphenation.

       The  Hunspell  algorithm	 currently  allows  any affixed form of words,
       which are lexically marked as potential members of compounds.  Hunspell
       improved	 this, and its recursive compound checking rules makes it pos‐
       sible to implement the intricate spelling conventions of Hungarian com‐
       pounds. For example, using COMPOUNDWORDMAX, COMPOUNDSYLLABLE, COMPOUND‐
       ROOT, SYLLABLENUM options can be set  the  noteworthy  Hungarian	 `6-3'
       rule.   Further	example	 in  Hungarian, derivate suffixes often modify
       compounding properties. Hunspell allows the compounding	flags  on  the
       affixes,	 and there are two special flags (COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG and (COM‐
       POUNDFORBIDFLAG) to permit or prohibit compounding of the derivations.

       Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       We also need several Hunspell features for handling German compounding:

	      # German compounding

	      # set language to handle special casing of German sharp s

	      LANG de_DE

	      # compound flags

	      COMPOUNDBEGIN U
	      COMPOUNDMIDDLE V
	      COMPOUNDEND W

	      # Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds,
	      # suffixes are allowed at the end of compounds by default:
	      # (prefix)?(root)+(affix)?
	      # Affixes with COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG may be inside of compounds.
	      COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG P

	      # for German fogemorphemes (Fuge-element)
	      # Hint: ONLYINCOMPOUND is not required everywhere, but the
	      # checking will be a little faster with it.

	      ONLYINCOMPOUND X

	      # forbid uppercase characters at compound word bounds
	      CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE

	      # for handling Fuge-elements with dashes (Arbeits-)
	      # dash will be a special word

	      COMPOUNDMIN 1
	      WORDCHARS -

	      # compound settings and fogemorpheme for `Arbeit'

	      SFX A Y 3
	      SFX A 0 s/UPX .
	      SFX A 0 s/VPDX .
	      SFX A 0 0/WXD .

	      SFX B Y 2
	      SFX B 0 0/UPX .
	      SFX B 0 0/VWXDP .

	      # a suffix for `Computer'

	      SFX C Y 1
	      SFX C 0 n/WD .

	      # for forbid exceptions (*Arbeitsnehmer)

	      FORBIDDENWORD Z

	      # dash prefix for compounds with dash (Arbeits-Computer)

	      PFX - Y 1
	      PFX - 0 -/P .

	      # decapitalizing prefix
	      # circumfix for positioning in compounds

	      PFX D Y 29
	      PFX D A a/PX A
	      PFX D Ä ä/PX Ä
	       .
	       .
	      PFX D Y y/PX Y
	      PFX D Z z/PX Z

       Example dictionary:

	      4
	      Arbeit/A-
	      Computer/BC-
	      -/W
	      Arbeitsnehmer/Z

       Accepted compound compound words with the previous resource:

	      Computer
	      Computern
	      Arbeit
	      Arbeits-
	      Computerarbeit
	      Computerarbeits-
	      Arbeitscomputer
	      Arbeitscomputern
	      Computerarbeitscomputer
	      Computerarbeitscomputern
	      Arbeitscomputerarbeit
	      Computerarbeits-Computer
	      Computerarbeits-Computern

       Not accepted compoundings:

	      computer
	      arbeit
	      Arbeits
	      arbeits
	      ComputerArbeit
	      ComputerArbeits
	      Arbeitcomputer
	      ArbeitsComputer
	      Computerarbeitcomputer
	      ComputerArbeitcomputer
	      ComputerArbeitscomputer
	      Arbeitscomputerarbeits
	      Computerarbeits-computer
	      Arbeitsnehmer

       This solution is still not ideal, however, and will be  replaced	 by  a
       pattern-based  compound-checking	 algorithm which is closely integrated
       with input buffer tokenization. Patterns describing compounds come as a
       separate input resource that can refer to high-level properties of con‐
       stituent parts (e.g. the number of syllables, affix flags, and contain‐
       ment  of hyphens). The patterns are matched against potential segmenta‐
       tions of compounds to assess wellformedness.

Unicode character encoding
       Both Ispell and Myspell use 8-bit ASCII character encoding, which is  a
       major  deficiency  when	it  comes to scalability.  Although a language
       like Hungarian has a standard ASCII  character  set  (ISO  8859-2),  it
       fails  to allow a full implementation of Hungarian orthographic conven‐
       tions.  For instance, the '--' symbol (n-dash)  is  missing  from  this
       character  set  contrary	 to  the fact that it is not only the official
       symbol to delimit parenthetic clauses in the language, but it can be in
       compound words as a special 'big' hyphen.

       MySpell	has  got  some	8-bit encoding tables, but there are languages
       without standard 8-bit encoding, too. For example,  a  lot  of  African
       languages have non-latin or extended latin characters.

       Similarly,  using  the  original spelling of certain foreign names like
       Ångström or Molière is encouraged by the Hungarian spelling norm,  and,
       since characters 'Å' and 'è' are not part of ISO 8859-2, when they com‐
       bine with inflections containing characters only	 in  ISO 8859-2	 (like
       elative	-ből, allative -től or delative -ről with double acute), these
       result in words (like Ångströmről or  Molière-től.)  that  can  not  be
       encoded using any single ASCII encoding scheme.

       The  problems raised in relation to 8-bit ASCII encoding have long been
       recognized by proponents of Unicode. It is  clear  that	trading	 effi‐
       ciency  for  encoding-independence  has	its advantages when it comes a
       truly multi-lingual application. There is implemented a memory and time
       efficient  Unicode  handling in Hunspell. In non-UTF-8 character encod‐
       ings Hunspell works with the original 8-bit strings. In UTF-8 encoding,
       affixes	and words are stored in UTF-8, during the analysis are handled
       in mostly UTF-8, under condition checking and suggestion are  converted
       to  UTF-16.  Unicode  text  analysis  and spell checking have a minimal
       (0-20%) time overhead and minimal or reasonable memory overhead depends
       from the language (its UTF-8 encoding and affixation).

Conversion of aspell dictionaries
       Aspell  dictionaries  can be easily converted into hunspell. Conversion
       steps:

       dictionary (xx.cwl -> xx.wl):

       preunzip xx.cwl
       wc -l < xx.wl > xx.dic
       cat xx.wl >> xx.dic

       affix file

       If the affix file exists, copy it:
       cp xx_affix.dat xx.aff
       If not, create it with the suitable character encoding (see xx.dat)
       echo "SET ISO8859-x" > xx.aff
       or
       echo "SET UTF-8" > xx.aff

       It's useful to add a TRY option with the characters of  the  dictionary
       with frequency order to set edit distance suggestions:
       echo "TRY qwertzuiopasdfghjklyxcvbnmQWERTZUIOPASDFGHJKLYXCVBNM" >>xx.aff

SEE ALSO
       hunspell (1), ispell (1), ispell (4)

				  2011-02-16			   hunspell(4)
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