/usr/bin/spell happily passes on flags that used to work for Unix spell, and which make ispell hang. In particular, the -b option to select British spelling. Note that RH also doesn't come with the British spelling dictionaries, which is annoying. They can be found, though. Here is an improved version of /usr/bin/spell which you are free to use: #!/bin/sh # # Make ispell work a bit more like spell. # # Author: Luke Kendall # unset SPARGS for arg do case "x$arg" in x-b) # British spelling SPARGS="$SPARGS -d english" ;; x-i) # Make deroff ignore .so and .nx commands. SPARGS="$SPARGS -n" ;; x-l) # Follow the chains of all included files. How? ;; x-v) # Print all words not literally in the spelling list SPARGS="$SPARGS -m" ;; x-x) # Print every plausible stem, one per line, with = preceding SPARGS="$SPARGS -m" ;; x+*) # local spelling word file, 1 per line, sorted pdict=`expr "x$arg" : "x\+\(.*\)"` SPARGS="$SPARGS -p '$pdict'" ;; *) FILES="$FILES '$arg'" ;; esac done eval "cat $FILES | ispell -l $SPARGS | sort -u"
We're moving to aspell for the next release - and we include a British dictionary with it.