Dear Carl
My experience is slightly different to yours. I can run Aspell from a
command prompt. It seems to take ages to load but I now see that if I
press the space bar, then it starts immediately. However if I run it
from within XY4 I get no command window opening. It is a shame, but with
the XY4 spellers, LEX and the OED I am pretty well provisioned. Thanks
for all your help getting it to work when we were using Windows 7.
Thanks also for the aside about the Windows subsystem for linux. I
might just experiment with that when I have some time. I have a version
of Mint running under VMWare but this sounds much simpler. (Oh, the joys
of computing.)
Best wishes
Paul
On 22/02/2023 00:02, Carl Distefano wrote:
Reply to note from "Paul Breeze" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
("paul.breeze") Tue, 21 Feb 2023 15:22:51 +0000
Hello, Paul,
I'm running Windows 10 as well, and I see the behavior you note in ASPL.
As best I can tell from quick research, this is due to some
not-well-understood incompatibility between Aspell and Win10. On this
score, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that Aspell is
no longer being developed for Windows, so there is no version later than
0.50.3 (which I assume we're both running) and no prospect of the Win10
incompatibility being addressed in any future release. The good news is
that there is (I think) an easy workaround. Try this experiment: Open a
file in XyWrite that you know has spelling issues. Command
ASPL<Helpkey>. Ignore the prompt in XyWrite. Does a cmd.exe window open?
If so, press the spacebar *once*. When I do this, Aspell runs normally
and, when it's done, I can save or discard the changes to the subject
file in XyWrite, as usual. Given the developmental dead-end that Aspell
for Windows has reached, I think this is the best we can hope for. Let
me know if!
it works for you.
As an aside, there is a way to run a current version of Aspell (0.60.8)
on Windows, by installing something called the Windows Subsystem for
Linux (WSL) and then installing Ubuntu on top of that. It's as easy as
installing any other Windows program, and you get a working Linux
installation that runs alongside other Windows programs (no need for
dual boot or a virtual machine). I haven't tried making it interoperable
with XyWrite and U2, but I know I can do it (in a kludge-y sort of way)
because I already do it with my remote Linux server. It's not for
everyone, but it's an option:
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-on-wsl2-on-windows-10
Best,
Carl