Run "ispell -a -m -B" with aspell-0.33.7.1-2 and pspell-0.12.2-4 and feed it the following input: <blank line> ! + ^\hyphenation{Clear ^DDTS} After the last line (the one containing DDTS), you'll see: & sgml 42 22: SGML, Simla, sigma, GM, Sm, gm, ml, XML, signal, Gal, Gil, SAM, Sal, Sam, Sim, Sol, gal, gel, sol, sum, GMT, MGM, Sgt, smile, Saul, sail, same, seal, sell, semi, sill, soil, soma, some, soul, sumo, SIMD, STOL, Sims, sump, sums, HTML & tex 16 27: TeX, Tex, TWX, text, Rex, TX, Dex, tax, tux, Te, ex, Mex, hex, lex, sex, vex I have no idea why. Emacs doesn't either. It reports, "Ispell misalignment: word `sgml' point 26; probably incompatible versions". Downgrading to aspell-0.33.7-1 appears to make the problem go away. Well, OK, I think I have a guess -- something is getting confused when emacs tells ispell to enter tex mode by sending it a "+".
I was wrong. Downgrading aspell didn't help. Neither did downgrading pspell. Emacs is still confused, but it's feeding slightly different input to aspell: ! + ^\thispagestyle{plain} ^\hyphenation{Clear I think part of the problem is probably that Emacs is not filtering out these tex commands, but other than that, I think aspell's reaction is probably still wrong.
Can you try the rpms at http://people.redhat.com/teg/aspell/ ?
1) What have you changed (i.e., why should I expect these RPMs to work :-)? 2) What pspell package should I use them with?
You shouldn't need to change the pspell package (use the standard RHL 7.2 one), as for what's done, it's magic (also known as actually use the correct version of the tarball).
Well, I'm now using aspell-0.33.7.1-6 and pspell-0.12.2-7, and everything appears to work. Incidentally, I'm not convinced you're right that the 7.2 version of pspell would work; I think there are link-time incompatibilities. You may want to check that, and if so, out a prereq line in the aspell package.
Should have closed this on the above comment :)