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Bug 177707 - Remove app-text/hspell from tree
Summary: Remove app-text/hspell from tree
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: New packages (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: High enhancement (vote)
Assignee: Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED)
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 178690
Blocks:
  Show dependency tree
 
Reported: 2007-05-08 19:44 UTC by Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED)
Modified: 2007-09-28 17:32 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-08 19:44:22 UTC
Hello,

Currently hspell is not maintained, while apsell and hundspell took the same dictionary and are maintained.

I would like to remove hspell from tree. Can you please remove the dependency from the following packages? Aspell should work in both cases, if LINGUS has "he".

Thanks.

---

treecleaner:
app-editors/geresh (Some discussion of removing at bug#149758)

gnome-office:
app-text/enchant
Comment 1 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-11 17:21:29 UTC
Anyone?
Comment 2 Ryan Hill (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-11 17:46:37 UTC
i'll look at geresh.
Comment 3 Ryan Hill (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-11 19:03:31 UTC
geresh done.
Comment 4 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-25 19:59:01 UTC
gnome-office?
Comment 5 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-06-05 19:17:03 UTC
is there any gnome-office?
Comment 6 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-06-07 19:51:26 UTC
I guess there is no gnome-office... So I will do this myself.
Comment 7 Daniel Gryniewicz (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-06-07 20:05:08 UTC
I just realized today I wasn't in gnome-office, although I'd thought I was.  If you've already done this, then good, otherwise I'll look at it.
Comment 8 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-06-07 20:09:31 UTC
I hoped someone will reply :)
Please check it out... Just remove the dependency should be simple. 
Thanks!
Comment 9 Daniel Gryniewicz (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-06-07 21:06:04 UTC
Sorry for the delay.  Enchant is done.
Comment 10 Stephen E. Baker 2007-07-10 02:38:38 UTC
If Enchant and Geresh are done, shouldn't this bug be closed?
Comment 11 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-07-10 03:05:04 UTC
Since bug#178690 should be closed first.
Comment 12 Wulf Krueger (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-08-30 21:18:18 UTC
Bug 178690 is now resolved.
Comment 13 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-08-30 21:23:01 UTC
Thanks!
But I need kde to drop dependency first (kdelibs-3.5.5-r10).
Comment 14 Wulf Krueger (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-08-30 21:55:19 UTC
 (In reply to comment #13)
> But I need kde to drop dependency first (kdelibs-3.5.5-r10).

What dependency? ;-) 

I've just dropped it.
Comment 15 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-08-30 21:59:17 UTC
Thanks!
But you should also remove:
    if use spell; then
        myconf="${myconf} $(use_with linguas_he hspell)"
    else
        myconf="${myconf} --without-hspell"
    fi

And use --without-hspell as static.
Comment 16 Wulf Krueger (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-08-30 22:32:17 UTC
Arg... I really shouldn't work on the tree when I'm excessively tired. :)

Fixed and thanks for letting me know.
Comment 17 Nadav Har'El 2007-09-16 10:22:47 UTC
Hi, as the author of Hspell I'd like to offer some clarifications.

First, what you have in your "hspell" package is the "hspell" command-line program, which implements the old Unix "ispell -a" and "spell" spell-checking interfaces, for the Hebrew language only. While it focuses on a single task only (and is not a multi-lingual spell-checker), it does this single task better than aspell's Hebrew dictionary (see more below) - it handles better a few cases (like words that must have a prefixes, and gimatria), it starts up much faster, and takes up less memory - and much less disk space (just 100 KB for the Hebrew dictionary!). It also has Hebrew-specific correct suggestions, and if compiled with this flag, also has an additional "morphological analyzer" feature.

Aspell's Hebrew dictionary is based on Hspell's data, and always created from its last release. The great thing about this dictionary is that any application that knows how to use aspell, can use this dictionary, and this is how, for example, GMail and OpenOffice can easily boast a Hebrew speller just like they have French or Spanish spell-checking. The problems with this implementation is like I mentioned above - it takes a long time to start (because of Hebrew's long list of complex prefixes and long list of words), uses a lot of memory, and makes correction suggestions which are more often than not, silly.

I think the ideal thing is - at least until aspell's performance issues are solves - is to have both hspell and aspell's Hebrew dictionary installed. The former would be used by applications that know how to use it directly, and the latter will be used by those who don't.

Saying that the "hspell" command line tool isn't maintained is not entirely accurate. True, the tool's code itself is rather static, and somewhat anachronistic (e.g., expects the ISO-8859-8 encoding), but the applications that use it have learned to work with these ideosynchracies. On the other hand, "hspell"'s dictionary *is* maintained, and will always be more up to date than the one from the Aspell site.
Comment 18 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-09-16 20:39:12 UTC
Hello Nadav,

Thank you for your comment.

(In reply to comment #17)
> Saying that the "hspell" command line tool isn't maintained is not entirely
> accurate. True, the tool's code itself is rather static, and somewhat
> anachronistic (e.g., expects the ISO-8859-8 encoding), but the applications
> that use it have learned to work with these ideosynchracies. On the other hand,
> "hspell"'s dictionary *is* maintained, and will always be more up to date than
> the one from the Aspell site.
> 

We discussed this offlist...
Currently the hspell library and application have some main issue:
1. You don't create PIC shared library, so we had to create a long patch to use autoconf/automake/libtool in order to do this. As you rejected this patch and did not provide your own implementation, we back to square one, require to drop this package.
2. Your interface is none UTF-8 (None standard in NLS environment), so no new application will likely use your library, having unique applications such as kdelibs just makes maintenance more complex.
4. There is no simple ability to translate a mixed (Hebrew/other) text in one shoot.
5. aspell provide some basic support, maybe someone can do this better, but at least it is maintained and supported by many applications.

Some references:
http://ivrix.org.il/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152818
http://ivrix.org.il/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=68
http://ivrix.org.il/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=83

I agree that hspell dictionary is more up to date, but with a proper script we can regenerate updated dictionary.

I recommend you cooperate with hunspell, aspell to integrate your unique functionality and continue to maintain the word list.
Comment 19 Nadav Har'El 2007-09-17 07:29:30 UTC
Alon, yes, I'm feeling a bit of a deja-vu over this discussion :-)

I never said that the "hspell" program was perfect. It has its flaws (which both you and I know) and they are not going to change soon. However, a bunch of applications which you list in this bug report don't care about these flaws: they were already written to pass ISO-8859-8 to hspell, they use the "hspell -i" process, not a library, or use Hspell's tiny static library (so the PIC issue is moot). The other issues you mention are irrelevant too (aspell also can't do mixed Hebrew/English/Spanish/whatever spelling).

So my point was, why spend the time modifying the applications that already call "hspell -i" (or use hspell in whatever way they use it), to use aspell instead? Of course, it's your prerogative, but if something ain't broken, why fix it?

Anyway, since I don't use gentoo myself, do what you please in Gentoo :-) The only reason I'm writing here is because an concerned Gentoo user contacted me and told me he was bothered by the removal of Hspell, and wanted to know if there's anything I could do about it.
Comment 20 Alon Bar-Lev (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-09-17 11:29:49 UTC
Hi!

We currently have no dependency of this package.
And you do not maintain (close/comment bugs) the package (lib + tool)
So... I do not wish to maintain such software, especially when in order to make it work I have to maintain a separate build environment. aspell/hunspell works find for me.

If a specific user needs it he can continue to use current package copied to his local overlay.

Alon.