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Charles (earlier in this thread) presented a reasonable Claws Mail spell-checking solution -- my Claws installation lacks an integrated spell checker -- that got me thinking and experimenting. Here is my solution/summary. SOLUTION: Spell Checking in Claws Mail Using aspell Background: I work in a corporate environment, on a CentOS-based computer without root access, where it was claimed that Claws Mail could not be installed. After I requested some needed packages (dependencies), I managed to compile Claws mail myself in my home directory, and it works fine. However, despite enchant being installed earlier by Systems (our support staff), it never worked right; e.g., my ~/.config./enchant/en_us.dic is overwritten to 0 bytes whenever I log out; this issue was never resolved. Perhaps related, when I compiled Claws Mail in my $HOME directory using ./configure --prefix=$HOME/... it compiled Claws without spell checking support. I therefore also (re-installed) enchant, set the $PATH, etc., and recompiled Claws -- all to no avail - any of these issues. Workaround: 1. Install (local user) GNU aspell (http://aspell.net/; see 'man aspell' for moreinformation). 2. Also need to install an aspell dictionary; my aspell dictionary is at ~/.aspell.en.pws; usage: aspell -c <file> 3. Enable a Claws Mail aspell-based spell check "action" (Configuration:Actions... menu): Per the example provided at http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/Actions ... Check spelling (Open a terminal and check the spelling with ispell): ... I modified this action to work with aspell (vs. ispell: not installed) and gnome-terminal (vs. xterm: not installed): | T=`mktemp $HOME/.tmpXXX`; cat - > $T ; gnome-terminal --geometry 150x55+25+25 -x aspell -c $T; printf ' ' >> $T; cat $T; rm $T | 4. Set Claws Mail keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-L) for aspell action: a. Configuration:Preferences:Other:Miscellaneous:Enable customizable keyboard shortcuts menu b. Hover over the Tools:Actions:aspell menu item in both the Claws main program window and separately in the message composition window and type your shortcut (e.g., Ctrl-L) Notes: 1. System environment, versions: Claws 3.10.1 on CentOS 6.5 Final 64-bit; aspell -v: @(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.6.1) 2. Claws Mail actions: http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/Actions 3. mktemp: see (e.g.) linux mktemp man page (http://linux.die.net/man/1/mktemp) and https://github.com/rtomayko/shocco/issues/5 (for " too few X's in template" error message) 4. cat - > : The '-' is important! Per the linux cat man page (provided example - annotated here): cat f - g ## Output f’s contents, then standard input [i.e. the '-'], then g’s contents." 5. gnome-terminal --geometry 150x55+25+25 ## width x height + xpos + ypos; adjust per your preference (or simply omit the --geometry option) 6. Problem - a quirk? The last character is truncated (omitted) when the output is returned to Claws; it is not due to aspell (tested independently using the same text in a text file using aspell in the terminal); the input is fine up to that point, so it must be in the latter "cat $T;" or "|" parts of the action command. Workarounds: a. Include a trailing space in your message, prior to running aspell. b. Alternatively (per http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-and-scripting/128970-add-space-end-file.html), modify the action script as follows (also implemented above, in case this portion of these notes is deleted or not read): programmatically add a trailing space at the end of the $T temporary file that is returned to Claws Mail (printf ' ' >> $T;): | T=`mktemp $HOME/.tmpXXX`; cat - > $T ; gnome-terminal --geometry 150x55+25+25 -x aspell -c $T; printf ' ' >> $T; cat $T; rm $T | 7. If there are no spelling errors, aspell will simply execute and terminate; i.e., it will appear that nothing has happened. 8. aspell, aspell dictionary installation notes (CentOS 6; abbreviated here): a. Install aspell binary [http://aspell.net/] ./configure --prefix=$HOME/Linux/apps/aspell Set path (see: https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cs348/unix_path.html): echo 'export PATH=/home/vstuart/Linux/apps/aspell/:$PATH' ## Note! Appending $PATH at the end, rather than the beginning, To make this path permanent, add the following to your ~/.bashrc: export PATH=/home/vstuart/Linux/apps/aspell/bin/:$PATH b. Install aspell dictionary ./configure --help In the following I guessed at the PREFIX= bit, but it seemed to work. I had to dig around for "prezip-bin" : it is here (in my aspell installation): /home/vstuart/Linux/apps/aspell/bin/prezip-bin So, the three steps are: ./configure --vars PREFIX=--prefix=$HOME/Linux/apps/aspell ASPELL=/home/vstuart/Linux/apps/aspell/bin/aspell 9. Also added aspell binary path to ~/.bashrc: alias aspell='echo " [~/Linux/apps/aspell/bin/aspell]" && /home/vstuart/Linux/apps/aspell/bin/aspell' Q.E.D. :-)
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