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hunspell(4)							   hunspell(4)

NAME
       hunspell - format of Hunspell dictionaries and affix files

DESCRIPTION
       Hunspell(1)  requires two files to define the language that it is spell
       checking.  The first file is a dictionary containing words for the lan‐
       guage,  and  the	 second is an "affix" file that defines the meaning of
       special flags in the dictionary.

       A dictionary file (*.dic) contains a list of words, one per line.   The
       first  line of the dictionaries (except personal dictionaries) contains
       the approximate word count (for optimal hash memory  size).  Each  word
       may  optionally	be  followed  by  a slash ("/") and one or more flags,
       which represents affixes or special attributes.	Dictionary  words  can
       contain	also slashes with the "" syntax. Default flag format is a sin‐
       gle (usually alphabetic) character. After the  dictionary  words	 there
       are also optional fields separated by tabulators or spaces (spaces only
       work as morphological field separators, if they are followed by morpho‐
       logical field ids, see also Optional data fields).

       Personal	 dictionaries  are  simple  word  lists. Asterisk at the first
       character position signs prohibition.  A second	word  separated	 by  a
       slash sets the affixation.

	      foo
	      Foo/Simpson
	      *bar

       In  this	 example, "foo" and "Foo" are personal words, plus Foo will be
       recognized with affixes of Simpson (Foo's etc.) and bar is a  forbidden
       word.

       An  affix  file	(*.aff) may contain a lot of optional attributes.  For
       example, SET is used for setting the character encodings of affixes and
       dictionary files.  TRY sets the change characters for suggestions.  REP
       sets a replacement table for multiple character corrections in  sugges‐
       tion  mode.   PFX  and SFX defines prefix and suffix classes named with
       affix flags.

       The following affix file	 example  defines  UTF-8  character  encoding.
       `TRY' suggestions differ from the bad word with an English letter or an
       apostrophe. With these REP definitions, Hunspell can suggest the	 right
       word  form,  when the misspelled word contains f instead of ph and vice
       versa.

	      SET UTF-8
	      TRY esianrtolcdugmphbyfvkwzESIANRTOLCDUGMPHBYFVKWZ'

	      REP 2
	      REP f ph
	      REP ph f

	      PFX A Y 1
	      PFX A 0 re .

	      SFX B Y 2
	      SFX B 0 ed [^y]
	      SFX B y ied y

       There are two affix classes in the dictionary. Class A defines a	 `re-'
       prefix.	Class  B defines two `-ed' suffixes. First suffix can be added
       to a word if the last character of the word isn't `y'.	Second	suffix
       can  be	added  to  the words terminated with an `y'.  (See later.) The
       following dictionary file uses these affix classes.

	      3
	      hello
	      try/B
	      work/AB

       All accepted words  with	 this  dictionary:  "hello",  "try",  "tried",
       "work", "worked", "rework", "reworked".

GENERAL OPTIONS
       Hunspell	 source distribution contains more than 80 examples for option
       usage.

       SET encoding
	      Set character encoding of words and morphemes in affix and  dic‐
	      tionary  files.  Possible values: UTF-8, ISO8859-1 - ISO8859-10,
	      ISO8859-13  -  ISO8859-15,  KOI8-R,  KOI8-U,   microsoft-cp1251,
	      ISCII-DEVANAGARI.

       FLAG value
	      Set  flag type. Default type is the extended ASCII (8-bit) char‐
	      acter.  `UTF-8' parameter sets UTF-8 encoded  Unicode  character
	      flags.   The `long' value sets the double extended ASCII charac‐
	      ter flag type, the `num' sets the decimal number flag type. Dec‐
	      imal flags numbered from 1 to 65000, and in flag fields are sep‐
	      arated by comma.	BUG: UTF-8 flag type doesn't work on ARM plat‐
	      form.

       COMPLEXPREFIXES
	      Set  twofold  prefix stripping (but single suffix stripping) for
	      agglutinative languages with right-to-left writing system.

       LANG langcode
	      Set language code. In Hunspell may be  language  specific	 codes
	      enabled  by  LANG code. At present there are az_AZ, hu_HU, TR_tr
	      specific codes in Hunspell (see the source code).

       IGNORE characters
	      Ignore characters	 from  dictionary  words,  affixes  and	 input
	      words.   Useful  for  optional characters, as Arabic diacritical
	      marks (Harakat).

       AF number_of_flag_vector_aliases

       AF flag_vector
	      Hunspell can substitute affix flag sets with ordinal numbers  in
	      affix rules (alias compression, see makealias tool). First exam‐
	      ple with alias compression:

	      3
	      hello
	      try/1
	      work/2

       AF definitions in the affix file:

	      SET UTF-8
	      TRY esianrtolcdugmphbyfvkwzESIANRTOLCDUGMPHBYFVKWZ'
	      AF 2
	      AF A
	      AF AB

       It is equivalent of the following dic file:

	      3
	      hello
	      try/A
	      work/AB

       See also tests/alias* examples of the source distribution.

       Note: If affix file contains the FLAG parameter, define it  before  the
       AF definitions.

       Note II: Use makealias utility in Hunspell distribution to compress aff
       and dic files.

       AM number_of_morphological_aliases

       AM morphological_fields
	      Hunspell can substitute also  morphological  data	 with  ordinal
	      numbers  in  affix  rules (alias compression).  See tests/alias*
	      examples.

OPTIONS FOR SUGGESTION
       Suggestion parameters can optimize the default n-gram,  character  swap
       and deletion suggestions of Hunspell. REP is suggested to fix the typi‐
       cal and especially bad language specific bugs, because the REP  sugges‐
       tions  have  the highest priority in the suggestion list.  PHONE is for
       languages with not pronunciation based orthography.

       KEY characters_separated_by_vertical_line_optionally
	      Hunspell searches and suggests words with one different  charac‐
	      ter  replaced  by a neighbor KEY character. Not neighbor charac‐
	      ters in KEY string separated by vertical line characters.	  Sug‐
	      gested KEY parameters for QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts:

	      KEY qwertyuiop|asdfghjkl|zxcvbnm
	      KEY pyfgcrl|aeouidhtns|qjkxbmwvz

       Using  the first QWERTY layout, Hunspell suggests "nude" and "node" for
       "*nide". A character may have more neighbors, too:

	      KEY qwertzuop|yxcvbnm|qaw|say|wse|dsx|sy|edr|fdc|dx|rft|gfv|fc|tgz|hgb|gv|zhu|jhn|hb|uji|kjm|jn|iko|lkm

       TRY characters
	      Hunspell can suggest right word forms, when they differ from the
	      bad  input  word	by  one TRY character. The parameter of TRY is
	      case sensitive.

       NOSUGGEST flag
	      Words signed with NOSUGGEST flag	are  not  suggested.  Proposed
	      flag for vulgar and obscene words (see also SUBSTANDARD).

       MAXNGRAMSUGS num
	      Set  number  of  n-gram suggestions. Value 0 switches off the n-
	      gram suggestions.

       NOSPLITSUGS
	      Disable split-word suggestions.

       SUGSWITHDOTS
	      Add dot(s) to suggestions, if input word terminates  in  dot(s).
	      (Not for OpenOffice.org dictionaries, because OpenOffice.org has
	      an automatic dot expansion mechanism.)

       REP number_of_replacement_definitions

       REP what replacement
	      We can define language-dependent	phonetic  information  in  the
	      affix  file  (.aff)   by	a replacement table.  First REP is the
	      header of this table and one or more REP data line are following
	      it.  With	 this  table, Hunspell can suggest the right forms for
	      the typical faults of spelling when the incorrect	 form  differs
	      by  more, than 1 letter from the right form.  For example a pos‐
	      sible English replacement table definition to handle  misspelled
	      consonants:

	      REP 8
	      REP f ph
	      REP ph f
	      REP f gh
	      REP gh f
	      REP j dg
	      REP dg j
	      REP k ch
	      REP ch k

       Note  I:	 It's  very useful to define replacements for the most typical
       one-character mistakes, too: with REP you can add higher priority to  a
       subset of the TRY suggestions (suggestion list begins with the REP sug‐
       gestions).

       Note II: Suggesting separated words by REP, you	can  specify  a	 space
       with an underline:

	      REP 1
	      REP alot a_lot

       Note  III:  Replacement	table can be used for a stricter compound word
       checking (forbidding generated compound words, if they are also	simple
       words with typical fault, see CHECKCOMPOUNDREP).

       MAP number_of_map_definitions

       MAP string_of_related_chars
	      We  can define language-dependent information on characters that
	      should be considered related (i.e. nearer than other  chars  not
	      in  the set) in the affix file (.aff)  by a character map table.
	      With this table, Hunspell can suggest the right forms for words,
	      which  incorrectly  choose  the  wrong letter from a related set
	      more than once in a word.

	      For example a possible mapping could be for the German  umlauted
	      ü	 versus	 the  regular  u;  the word Frühstück really should be
	      written with umlauted u's and not regular ones

	      MAP 1
	      MAP uü

       PHONE number_of_phone_definitions

       PHONE what replacement
	      PHONE uses a table-driven phonetic transcription algorithm  bor‐
	      rowed from Aspell. It is useful for languages with not pronunci‐
	      ation based orthography. You can add a full alphabet  conversion
	      and  other rules for conversion of special letter sequences. For
	      detailed documentation see  http://aspell.net/man-html/Phonetic-
	      Code.html.   Note:  Multibyte  UTF-8  characters have not worked
	      with bracket expression yet. Dash expression  has	 signed	 bytes
	      and not UTF-8 characters yet.

OPTIONS FOR COMPOUNDING
       BREAK number_of_break_definitions

       BREAK character_or_character_sequence
	      Define  break  points for breaking words and checking word parts
	      separately.  Rationale:  useful  for  compounding	 with  joining
	      character	 or strings (for example, hyphen in English and German
	      or hyphen and n-dash in Hungarian).  Dashes are often bad	 break
	      points  for tokenization, because compounds with dashes may con‐
	      tain not valid parts, too.)  With BREAK, Hunspell can check both
	      side  of	these  compounds,  breaking the words at dashes and n-
	      dashes:

	      BREAK 2
	      BREAK -
	      BREAK --	  # n-dash

       Breaking are recursive, so foo-bar, bar-foo and foo-foo--bar-bar	 would
       be valid compounds.

       Note:  COMPOUNDRULE  is	better (or will be better) for handling dashes
       and other  compound joining characters or character strings. Use BREAK,
       if  you	want  check  words with dashes or other joining characters and
       there is no time or possibility to describe precise compound rules with
       COMPOUNDRULE (COMPOUNDRULE has handled only the last suffixation of the
       compound word yet).

       Note II: For command line spell	checking,  set	WORDCHARS  parameters:
       WORDCHARS --- (see tests/break.*) example

       COMPOUNDRULE number_of_compound_definitions

       COMPOUNDRULE compound_pattern
	      Define  custom  compound patterns with a regex-like syntax.  The
	      first COMPOUNDRULE is a header with the number of the  following
	      COMPOUNDRULE  definitions.  Compound  patterns  consist compound
	      flags, parentheses, star and question mark  meta	characters.  A
	      flag  followed  by  a  `*'  matches a word sequence of 0 or more
	      matches of words signed with this compound flag.	 A  flag  fol‐
	      lowed  by	 a  `?' matches a word sequence of 0 or 1 matches of a
	      word signed with	this  compound	flag.	See  tests/compound*.*
	      examples.

	      Note:  en_US  dictionary of OpenOffice.org uses COMPOUNDRULE for
	      ordinal number recognition (1st, 2nd, 11th, 12th,	 22nd,	112th,
	      1000122nd etc.).

	      Note  II:	 In the case of long and numerical flag types use only
	      parenthesized flags: (1500)*(2000)?

	      Note III: COMPOUNDRULE flags haven't been	 compatible  with  the
	      COMPOUNDFLAG,  COMPOUNDBEGIN, etc. compound flags yet (use these
	      flags on different words).

       COMPOUNDMIN num
	      Minimum length of words in compound words.  Default value	 is  3
	      letters.

       COMPOUNDFLAG flag
	      Words  signed with COMPOUNDFLAG may be in compound words (except
	      when word shorter than COMPOUNDMIN). Affixes  with  COMPOUNDFLAG
	      also permits compounding of affixed words.

       COMPOUNDBEGIN flag
	      Words  signed with COMPOUNDBEGIN (or with a signed affix) may be
	      first elements in compound words.

       COMPOUNDLAST flag
	      Words signed with COMPOUNDLAST (or with a signed affix)  may  be
	      last elements in compound words.

       COMPOUNDMIDDLE flag
	      Words signed with COMPOUNDMIDDLE (or with a signed affix) may be
	      middle elements in compound words.

       ONLYINCOMPOUND flag
	      Suffixes signed with ONLYINCOMPOUND flag may be only  inside  of
	      compounds	 (Fuge-elements	 in German, fogemorphemes in Swedish).
	      ONLYINCOMPOUND flag works also with words (see  tests/onlyincom‐
	      pound.*).

       COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG flag
	      Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds, suffixes are
	      allowed at the end of compounds by default.  Affixes  with  COM‐
	      POUNDPERMITFLAG may be inside of compounds.

       COMPOUNDFORBIDFLAG flag
	      Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       COMPOUNDROOT flag
	      COMPOUNDROOT  flag signs the compounds in the dictionary (Now it
	      is used only in the Hungarian language specific code).

       COMPOUNDWORDMAX number
	      Set maximum word count in a compound word.  (Default  is	unlim‐
	      ited.)

       CHECKCOMPOUNDDUP
	      Forbid word duplication in compounds (e.g. foofoo).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDREP
	      Forbid  compounding, if the (usually bad) compound word may be a
	      non compound word with a REP fault. Useful  for  languages  with
	      `compound friendly' orthography.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE
	      Forbid upper case characters at word bound in compounds.

       CHECKCOMPOUNDTRIPLE
	      Forbid  compounding,  if	compound  word contains triple letters
	      (e.g. foo|ox or xo|oof).	Bug: missing multi-byte character sup‐
	      port in UTF-8 encoding (works only for 7-bit ASCII characters).

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN number_of_checkcompoundpattern_definitions

       CHECKCOMPOUNDPATTERN endchars beginchars
	      Forbid  compounding,  if	first  word in compound ends with end‐
	      chars, and next word begins with beginchars.

       COMPOUNDSYLLABLE max_syllable vowels
	      Need for special compounding rules in Hungarian.	First  parame‐
	      ter  is  the maximum syllable number, that may be in a compound,
	      if words in compounds are	 more  than  COMPOUNDWORDMAX.	Second
	      parameter is the list of vowels (for calculating syllables).

       SYLLABLENUM flags
	      Need for special compounding rules in Hungarian.

OPTIONS FOR AFFIX CREATION
       PFX flag cross_product number

       PFX flag stripping prefix [condition [morphological_fields...]]

       SFX flag cross_product number

       SFX flag stripping suffix [condition [morphological_fields...]]
	      An  affix	 is either a prefix or a suffix attached to root words
	      to make other words. We can define affix classes with  arbitrary
	      number  affix rules.  Affix classes are signed with affix flags.
	      The first line of an affix class definition is the  header.  The
	      fields of an affix class header:

	      (0) Option name (PFX or SFX)

	      (1) Flag (name of the affix class)

	      (2) Cross product (permission to combine prefixes and suffixes).
	      Possible values: Y (yes) or N (no)

	      (3) Line count of the following rules.

	      Fields of an affix rules:

	      (0) Option name

	      (1) Flag

	      (2) stripping characters from beginning (at prefix rules) or end
	      (at suffix rules) of the word

	      (3)  affix (optionally with flags of continuation classes, sepa‐
	      rated by a slash)

	      (4) condition.

	      Zero stripping or affix are indicated by zero. Zero condition is
	      indicated	 by  dot.   Condition is a simplified, regular expres‐
	      sion-like pattern, which must be met before  the	affix  can  be
	      applied. (Dot signs an arbitrary character. Characters in braces
	      sign an arbitrary character  from	 the  character	 subset.  Dash
	      hasn't  got  special  meaning, but circumflex (^) next the first
	      brace sets the complementer character set.)

	      (5) Optional morphological fields separated by spaces or tabula‐
	      tors.

OTHER OPTIONS
       CIRCUMFIX flag
	      Affixes  signed  with  CIRCUMFIX flag may be on a word when this
	      word also has a prefix with CIRCUMFIX flag and vice versa.

       FORBIDDENWORD flag
	      This flag signs forbidden word form. Because affixed  forms  are
	      also  forbidden,	we  can	 subtract  a  subset  from  set of the
	      accepted affixed and compound words.

       FULLSTRIP
	      With FULLSTRIP, affix rules can strip full words, not  only  one
	      less characters.

	      Note: conditions may be word length without FULLSTRIP, too.

       KEEPCASE flag
	      Forbid  uppercased  and  capitalized  forms of words signed with
	      KEEPCASE flags. Useful for special  orthographies	 (measurements
	      and  currency  often  keep  their	 case in uppercased texts) and
	      writing systems (e.g. keeping lower case of IPA characters).

	      Note: With CHECKSHARPS declaration, words with sharp s and KEEP‐
	      CASE  flag  may  be  capitalized	and uppercased, but uppercased
	      forms of these words may not contain sharp s, only SS. See  ger‐
	      mancompounding  example  in  the tests directory of the Hunspell
	      distribution.

       LEMMA_PRESENT flag
	      Not  used	 in  Hunspell  1.2.  Use  "st:"	  field	  instead   of
	      LEMMA_PRESENT.

       NEEDAFFIX flag
	      This  flag  signs virtual stems in the dictionary.  Only affixed
	      forms of these words will be accepted by Hunspell.   Except,  if
	      the  dictionary  word  has a homonym or a zero affix.  NEEDAFFIX
	      works also with prefixes and prefix + suffix  combinations  (see
	      tests/pseudoroot5.*).

       PSEUDOROOT flag
	      Deprecated. (Former name of the NEEDAFFIX option.)

       SUBSTANDARD flag
	      SUBSTANDARD  flag	 signs affix rules and dictionary words (allo‐
	      morphs) not used in morphological generation (and in  suggestion
	      in the future versions). See also NOSUGGEST.

       WORDCHARS characters
	      WORDCHARS	 extends  tokenizer of Hunspell command line interface
	      with additional word character. For example, dot, dash,  n-dash,
	      numbers, percent sign are word character in Hungarian.

       CHECKSHARPS
	      SS  letter  pair	in uppercased (German) words may be upper case
	      sharp s (ß).  Hunspell can handle this special casing  with  the
	      CHECKSHARPS  declaration	(see also KEEPCASE flag and tests/ger‐
	      mancompounding example) in both spelling and suggestion.

Morphological analysis
       Hunspell's dictionary items and affix rules may have optional space  or
       tabulator  separated  morphological  description	 fields,  started with
       3-character (two letters and a colon) field IDs:

	       word/flags po:noun is:nom

       Example: We define a simple resource with morphological informations, a
       derivative suffix (ds:) and a part of speech category (po:):

       Affix file:

	       SFX X Y 1
	       SFX X 0 able . ds:able

       Dictionary file:

	       drink/X po:verb

       Test file:

	       drink
	       drinkable

       Test:

	       $ analyze test.aff test.dic test.txt
	       > drink
	       analyze(drink) = po:verb
	       stem(drink) = po:verb
	       > drinkable
	       analyze(drinkable) = po:verb ds:able
	       stem(drinkable) = drinkable

       You  can see in the example, that the analyzer concatenates the morpho‐
       logical fields in item and arrangement style.

Optional data fields
       Default morphological and other IDs (used in suggestion,	 stemming  and
       morphological generation):

       ph:    Alternative  transliteration for better suggestion.  It's useful
	      for words with foreign pronunciation. (Dictionary based phonetic
	      suggestion.)  For example:

	      Marseille ph:maarsayl

       st:    Stem.  Optional:	default stem is the dictionary item in morpho‐
	      logical analysis. Stem field is useful for virtual  stems	 (dic‐
	      tionary  words with NEEDAFFIX flag) and morphological exceptions
	      instead of new, single used morphological rules.

	      feet  st:foot  is:plural
	      mice  st:mouse is:plural
	      teeth st:tooth is:plural

       Word forms with multiple stems need multiple dictionary items:

	      lay po:verb st:lie is:past_2
	      lay po:verb is:present
	      lay po:noun

       al:    Allomorph(s). A dictionary item is the stem of  its  allomorphs.
	      Morphological generation needs stem, allomorph and affix fields.

	      sing al:sang al:sung
	      sang st:sing
	      sung st:sing

       po:    Part of speech category.

       ds:    Derivational  suffix(es).	  Stemming doesn't remove derivational
	      suffixes.	 Morphological generation depends on the order of  the
	      suffix fields.

	      In affix rules:

	      SFX Y Y 1
	      SFX Y 0 ly . ds:ly_adj

       In the dictionary:

	      ably st:able ds:ly_adj
	      able al:ably

       is:    Inflectional  suffix(es).	 All inflectional suffixes are removed
	      by stemming.  Morphological generation depends on the  order  of
	      the suffix fields.

	      feet st:foot is:plural

       ts:    Terminal	suffix(es).   Terminal	suffix fields are inflectional
	      suffix fields "removed" by additional (not terminal) suffixes.

	      Useful for zero  morphemes  and  affixes	removed	 by  splitting
	      rules.

	      work/D ts:present

	      SFX D Y 2
	      SFX D   0 ed . is:past_1
	      SFX D   0 ed . is:past_2

       Typical example of the terminal suffix is the zero morpheme of the nom‐
       inative case.

       sp:    Surface prefix. Temporary solution for adding  prefixes  to  the
	      stems and generated word forms. See tests/morph.* example.

       pa:    Parts  of	 the  compound	words.	Output fields of morphological
	      analysis for stemming.

       dp:    Planned: derivational prefix.

       ip:    Planned: inflectional prefix.

       tp:    Planned: terminal prefix.

Twofold suffix stripping
       Ispell's original algorithm strips only one suffix. Hunspell can	 strip
       another one yet (or a plus prefix in COMPLEXPREFIXES mode).

       The  twofold  suffix stripping is a significant improvement in handling
       of immense number of suffixes,  that  characterize  agglutinative  lan‐
       guages.

       A  second  `s' suffix (affix class Y) will be the continuation class of
       the suffix `able' in the following example:

	       SFX Y Y 1
	       SFX Y 0 s .

	       SFX X Y 1
	       SFX X 0 able/Y .

       Dictionary file:

	       drink/X

       Test file:

	       drink
	       drinkable
	       drinkables

       Test:

	       $ hunspell -m -d test <test.txt
	       drink st:drink
	       drinkable st:drink fl:X
	       drinkables st:drink fl:X fl:Y

       Theoretically with the twofold suffix stripping needs only  the	square
       root  of the number of suffix rules, compared with a Hunspell implemen‐
       tation. In our practice, we could have elaborated the Hungarian inflec‐
       tional morphology with twofold suffix stripping.

Extended affix classes
       Hunspell can handle more than 65000 affix classes.  There are three new
       syntax for giving flags in affix and dictionary files.

       FLAG long command sets 2-character flags:

		FLAG long
		SFX Y1 Y 1
		SFX Y1 0 s 1

       Dictionary record with the Y1, Z3, F? flags:

		foo/Y1Z3F?

       FLAG num command sets numerical flags separated by comma:

		FLAG num
		SFX 65000 Y 1
		SFX 65000 0 s 1

       Dictionary example:

		foo/65000,12,2756

       The third one is the Unicode character flags.

Homonyms
       Hunspell's dictionary can contain repeating elements that are homonyms:

	       work/A	 po:verb
	       work/B	 po:noun

       An affix file:

	       SFX A Y 1
	       SFX A 0 s . sf:sg3

	       SFX B Y 1
	       SFX B 0 s . is:plur

       Test file:

	       works

       Test:

	       $ hunspell -d test -m <testwords
	       work st:work po:verb is:sg3
	       work st:work po:noun is:plur

       This feature also gives a way to forbid illegal prefix/suffix  combina‐
       tions.

Prefix--suffix dependencies
       An  interesting side-effect of multi-step stripping is, that the appro‐
       priate treatment of circumfixes now comes for free.  For	 instance,  in
       Hungarian,  superlatives are formed by simultaneous prefixation of leg-
       and suffixation of -bb to the adjective base.  A problem with the  one-
       level  architecture is that there is no way to render lexical licensing
       of particular  prefixes	and  suffixes  interdependent,	and  therefore
       incorrect  forms	 are  recognized  as  valid,  i.e. *legvén = leg + vén
       `old'. Until the introduction of clusters, a special treatment  of  the
       superlative  had to be hardwired in the earlier HunSpell code. This may
       have been legitimate for a single  case,	 but  in  fact	prefix--suffix
       dependences  are	 ubiquitous in category-changing derivational patterns
       (cf. English payable, non-payable but *non-pay or  drinkable,  undrink‐
       able but *undrink). In simple words, here, the prefix un- is legitimate
       only if the base drink is suffixed with -able. If  both	these  patters
       are  handled by on-line affix rules and affix rules are checked against
       the base only, there is no way to express this dependency and the  sys‐
       tem will necessarily over- or undergenerate.

       In  next example, suffix class R have got a prefix `continuation' class
       (class P).

	      PFX P Y 1
	      PFX P   0 un . [prefix_un]+

	      SFX S Y 1
	      SFX S   0 s . +PL

	      SFX Q Y 1
	      SFX Q   0 s . +3SGV

	      SFX R Y 1
	      SFX R   0 able/PS . +DER_V_ADJ_ABLE

       Dictionary:

	      2
	      drink/RQ	[verb]
	      drink/S	[noun]

       Morphological analysis:

	      > drink
	      drink[verb]
	      drink[noun]
	      > drinks
	      drink[verb]+3SGV
	      drink[noun]+PL
	      > drinkable
	      drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
	      > drinkables
	      drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
	      > undrinkable
	      [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE
	      > undrinkables
	      [prefix_un]+drink[verb]+DER_V_ADJ_ABLE+PL
	      > undrink
	      Unknown word.
	      > undrinks
	      Unknown word.

Circumfix
       Conditional affixes implemented by a continuation class are not	enough
       for  circumfixes,  because  a  circumfix is one affix in morphology. We
       also need CIRCUMFIX option for correct morphological analysis.

	      # circumfixes: ~ obligate prefix/suffix combinations
	      # superlative in Hungarian: leg- (prefix) AND -bb (suffix)
	      # nagy, nagyobb, legnagyobb, legeslegnagyobb
	      # (great, greater, greatest, most greatest)

	      CIRCUMFIX X

	      PFX A Y 1
	      PFX A 0 leg/X .

	      PFX B Y 1
	      PFX B 0 legesleg/X .

	      SFX C Y 3
	      SFX C 0 obb . +COMPARATIVE
	      SFX C 0 obb/AX . +SUPERLATIVE
	      SFX C 0 obb/BX . +SUPERSUPERLATIVE

       Dictionary:

	      1
	      nagy/C	[MN]

       Analysis:

	      > nagy
	      nagy[MN]
	      > nagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+COMPARATIVE
	      > legnagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+SUPERLATIVE
	      > legeslegnagyobb
	      nagy[MN]+SUPERSUPERLATIVE

Compounds
       Allowing free compounding yields decrease in precision of  recognition,
       not  to	mention stemming and morphological analysis.  Although lexical
       switches are introduced to license compounding of bases by Ispell, this
       proves not to be restrictive enough. For example:

	      # affix file
	      COMPOUNDFLAG X

	      2
	      foo/X
	      bar/X

       With this resource, foobar and barfoo also are accepted words.

       This  has  been improved upon with the introduction of direction-sensi‐
       tive compounding, i.e., lexical features can specify separately whether
       a  base	can  occur  as leftmost or rightmost constituent in compounds.
       This, however, is still insufficient to handle the  intricate  patterns
       of  compounding,	 not  to mention idiosyncratic (and language specific)
       norms of hyphenation.

       The Hunspell algorithm currently allows	any  affixed  form  of	words,
       which  are lexically marked as potential members of compounds. Hunspell
       improved this, and its recursive compound checking rules makes it  pos‐
       sible to implement the intricate spelling conventions of Hungarian com‐
       pounds. For example, using COMPOUNDWORDMAX, COMPOUNDSYLLABLE, COMPOUND‐
       ROOT,  SYLLABLENUM  options  can	 be set the noteworthy Hungarian `6-3'
       rule.  Further example in Hungarian,  derivate  suffixes	 often	modify
       compounding  properties.	 Hunspell  allows the compounding flags on the
       affixes, and there are two special flags (COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG and	 (COM‐
       POUNDFORBIDFLAG) to permit or prohibit compounding of the derivations.

       Suffixes with this flag forbid compounding of the affixed word.

       We also need several Hunspell features for handling German compounding:

	      # German compounding

	      # set language to handle special casing of German sharp s

	      LANG de_DE

	      # compound flags

	      COMPOUNDBEGIN U
	      COMPOUNDMIDDLE V
	      COMPOUNDEND W

	      # Prefixes are allowed at the beginning of compounds,
	      # suffixes are allowed at the end of compounds by default:
	      # (prefix)?(root)+(affix)?
	      # Affixes with COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG may be inside of compounds.
	      COMPOUNDPERMITFLAG P

	      # for German fogemorphemes (Fuge-element)
	      # Hint: ONLYINCOMPOUND is not required everywhere, but the
	      # checking will be a little faster with it.

	      ONLYINCOMPOUND X

	      # forbid uppercase characters at compound word bounds
	      CHECKCOMPOUNDCASE

	      # for handling Fuge-elements with dashes (Arbeits-)
	      # dash will be a special word

	      COMPOUNDMIN 1
	      WORDCHARS -

	      # compound settings and fogemorpheme for `Arbeit'

	      SFX A Y 3
	      SFX A 0 s/UPX .
	      SFX A 0 s/VPDX .
	      SFX A 0 0/WXD .

	      SFX B Y 2
	      SFX B 0 0/UPX .
	      SFX B 0 0/VWXDP .

	      # a suffix for `Computer'

	      SFX C Y 1
	      SFX C 0 n/WD .

	      # for forbid exceptions (*Arbeitsnehmer)

	      FORBIDDENWORD Z

	      # dash prefix for compounds with dash (Arbeits-Computer)

	      PFX - Y 1
	      PFX - 0 -/P .

	      # decapitalizing prefix
	      # circumfix for positioning in compounds

	      PFX D Y 29
	      PFX D A a/PX A
	      PFX D Ä ä/PX Ä
	       .
	       .
	      PFX D Y y/PX Y
	      PFX D Z z/PX Z

       Example dictionary:

	      4
	      Arbeit/A-
	      Computer/BC-
	      -/W
	      Arbeitsnehmer/Z

       Accepted compound compound words with the previous resource:

	      Computer
	      Computern
	      Arbeit
	      Arbeits-
	      Computerarbeit
	      Computerarbeits-
	      Arbeitscomputer
	      Arbeitscomputern
	      Computerarbeitscomputer
	      Computerarbeitscomputern
	      Arbeitscomputerarbeit
	      Computerarbeits-Computer
	      Computerarbeits-Computern

       Not accepted compoundings:

	      computer
	      arbeit
	      Arbeits
	      arbeits
	      ComputerArbeit
	      ComputerArbeits
	      Arbeitcomputer
	      ArbeitsComputer
	      Computerarbeitcomputer
	      ComputerArbeitcomputer
	      ComputerArbeitscomputer
	      Arbeitscomputerarbeits
	      Computerarbeits-computer
	      Arbeitsnehmer

       This  solution  is  still not ideal, however, and will be replaced by a
       pattern-based compound-checking algorithm which is  closely  integrated
       with input buffer tokenization. Patterns describing compounds come as a
       separate input resource that can refer to high-level properties of con‐
       stituent parts (e.g. the number of syllables, affix flags, and contain‐
       ment of hyphens). The patterns are matched against potential  segmenta‐
       tions of compounds to assess wellformedness.

Unicode character encoding
       Both  Ispell and Myspell use 8-bit ASCII character encoding, which is a
       major deficiency when it comes to  scalability.	 Although  a  language
       like  Hungarian	has  a	standard  ASCII character set (ISO 8859-2), it
       fails to allow a full implementation of Hungarian orthographic  conven‐
       tions.	For  instance,	the  '--' symbol (n-dash) is missing from this
       character set contrary to the fact that it is  not  only	 the  official
       symbol to delimit parenthetic clauses in the language, but it can be in
       compound words as a special 'big' hyphen.

       MySpell has got some 8-bit encoding tables,  but	 there	are  languages
       without	standard  8-bit	 encoding,  too. For example, a lot of African
       languages have non-latin or extended latin characters.

       Similarly, using the original spelling of certain  foreign  names  like
       Ångström	 or Molière is encouraged by the Hungarian spelling norm, and,
       since characters 'Å' and 'è' are not part of ISO 8859-2, when they com‐
       bine  with  inflections	containing characters only in ISO 8859-2 (like
       elative -ből, allative -től or delative -ről with double acute),	 these
       result  in  words  (like	 Ångströmről  or Molière-től.) that can not be
       encoded using any single ASCII encoding scheme.

       The problems raised in relation to 8-bit ASCII encoding have long  been
       recognized  by  proponents  of  Unicode. It is clear that trading effi‐
       ciency for encoding-independence has its advantages  when  it  comes  a
       truly multi-lingual application. There is implemented a memory and time
       efficient Unicode handling in Hunspell. In non-UTF-8  character	encod‐
       ings Hunspell works with the original 8-bit strings. In UTF-8 encoding,
       affixes and words are stored in UTF-8, during the analysis are  handled
       in  mostly UTF-8, under condition checking and suggestion are converted
       to UTF-16. Unicode text analysis and  spell  checking  have  a  minimal
       (0-20%) time overhead and minimal or reasonable memory overhead depends
       from the language (its UTF-8 encoding and affixation).

SEE ALSO
       hunspell (1), ispell (1), ispell (4)

				  2008-08-15			   hunspell(4)
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