The Hspell Project
Older News
December 12, 2004
Hspell enables Hebrew spell-checking in multi-lingual spell-checkers
For several months now, the multi-lingual spell-checker Aspell includes a Hebrew dictionary, created automatically from Hspell's data. Recently, we also converted Hspell's word list and valid prefix information to the similar MySpell format, used by the multi-lingual spell-checkers of Mozilla and OpenOffice.
OpenOffice's dictionary page now lists our Hebrew dictionary, and it can also be automatically installed by the DicOOo dictionary-installation macro. This allows, for the first time, Hebrew spell-checking on ordinary versions of OpenOffice, on all platforms (not limited to Linux).
To install the Hspell-based Hebrew spell-checker on Mozilla, check out Mozilla's instructions.
We started the effort to bring Hspell-based Hebrew spell-checking to common multi-lingual spell-checkers in April. The success of this effort validates our architectural decision of having Hspell generate full word lists, of the kind that most multi-lingual spell-checkers accept without needing any Hebrew-specific code to be added to them.
July 4, 2004
Hspell enables Hebrew spell-checking in OpenOffice
Alan Yaniger of TkOS recently released an add-on package for the ordinary (English) version of OpenOffice, based on Hspell. This package allows OpenOffice to spell-check Hebrew in addition to English (you don't need to choose, each word in a mixed document is checked using the dictionary of the appropriate language). Alan's package uses, however, antiquated dictionaries from Hspell 0.6, which are included, uncompressed (!), in the package.
We created an easier to install RPM version of this package. This RPM is designed for Fedora Core 1, and assumes that the OpenOffice RPM is already installed on your system. It includes the most recent (release 0.8) dictionaries.
June 28, 2004
Hspell bug tracker announced
The Hspell project now has a Bugzilla bug tracking system. Users can use this system to let the developers know of new bugs and missing features, and to track the progress in solving old ones.
June 21, 2004
Hspell 0.8 released
Hspell 0.8 was released. This release continues to enlarge Hspell's vocabulary, and to improve portability and performance. It can also be used to build a Hebrew dictionary for the upcoming version of Aspell. The What's New file explains these changes in more detail.
April 12, 2004
Hspell gaining acceptance, Aspell uses Hspell word list
After seven public releases and almost a year and a half since the first one, Hspell has been gaining acceptance as the free-software Hebrew spell-checker. As you can see in the download page, pre-built binary packages of Hspell are available for several Linux distributions, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Several software packages make use of Hspell, including the Hebrew version of OpenOffice which includes Hspell inside. The screenshots section is continuing to grow, showing Hspell integration inside a large number of editors, word processors, and desktop systems.
Also, In the last few days, the Hspell and Aspell authors have completed their effort to fully integrate Hspell's word list (and information on allowed prefixes for each word) into Aspell, which is striving to become a multi-lingual spell checker. The success of this effort will hopefully further improve the penetration of Hspell and Hebrew spell-checking in desktop systems and free OS distributions.
December 22, 2003
Hspell 0.7 released
Hspell 0.7 was released. This release continues to enlarge Hspell's vocabulary, and for the first time has a complete morphological analyzer. See the What's New file for more details.
October 26, 2003
Macintosh port announced
Mitz Pettel just announced a Mac OS X port of Hspell. Go get it.
August 8, 2003
Hspell HOWTO
Mooffie and Meni Livne wrote a new HOWTO explaining how to use Hspell 0.6 to do Hebrew spell-checking in LyX, KDE, Emacs and Geresh. Vim instructions will follow shortly.
August 5, 2003
Hspell 0.6 released
Hspell 0.6 was released, featuring a completely rewritten front-end, with a huge performance improvement and smarter handling of prefixes. The What's New file explains these changes in more detail.
July 24, 2003
Coverage in PCplus
While waiting patiently for release 0.6 to be released soon (it will be worth the wait!), you might want to read the article from the latest issue of PCplus, about free software and Hebrew that is partly about Hspell. The article is in Hebrew.
May 14, 2003
Screenshots added to the site
A new "Examples and screenshots" section was added to the Documents page. The first screenshot there is Meni Livne's beautiful demonstration of spellchecking Hebrew in the upcoming KDE's mail application, KMail.
May 8, 2003
Hspell 0.5 released
At close proximity to happy events like Israel's independence day and VE day, we released version 0.5 of Hspell, with an enlarged vocabulary and other improvements (see the What's New).
April 2, 2003
Upcoming Hspell presentations
A new article about Hspell was written for the "Yet Another Perl Conference" (May 11, Haifa, Israel) that Nadav will present in. The article presents Hspell's approach, explains one part (noun inflection) in a little more details, and also tries to convince its readers that Perl Is Good :)
Nadav will also give a presentation on Hspell in the Go-Linux conference (April 10, Tel-Aviv, Israel).
March 22, 2003
Previous announcements put on site
For those who missed our humoristic release announcements on ivrix-discuss and linux-il, or those that didn't understand them on first reading, the announcements are now available here.
March 10, 2003
Hspell 0.4 released
This new release of Hspell contains our biggest dictionary ever (a quarter of a million inflections!), and adds a few useful features, like easier Hebrew-English spell-checking for LyX.
Why are you just sitting there? Go download it!
March 4, 2003
New Hspell website announced
No more hard-to-navigate, plain-old-white, site. Welcome to the new site that pretends to to be cool, as well as useful, and still be accessible to any conceivable browser.
We welcome constructive remarks and criticism on the new site. If you have non-constructive complaints, please send them to Dave Null.