Install hspell with Homebrew, apt, dnf, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• hspell
• hspell-i
• multispell

Project history

The project was written by Nadav Har'El and Dan Kenigsberg. Its site describes the goal as creating a free Hebrew spell checker and making the algorithms and dictionaries available for research and applications that need Hebrew word lists or morphology.

The public release series started with 0.1 in December 2002. Early releases grew the dictionary, added front-end improvements, and exposed data in formats useful to other spelling engines. Version 0.7 added a complete morphological analyzer, and version 1.0 in 2006 marked a mature vocabulary of more than 22,500 base words.

A major licensing change arrived with version 1.2 in 2012, when the project switched from GPL to AGPL. Version 1.4 in 2017 was released after the Academy of the Hebrew Language announced a new niqqud-less spelling standard, with the project stating that 1.4 would be the last version to follow the older standard.

Adoption history

Hspell's adoption story is unusually visible for a linguistic package. The project news records integration work with Aspell, MySpell, OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, LyX, Vim, Emacs, AbiWord, and Mac OS X workflows. The download page also lists Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Gentoo, OpenOffice, Firefox, Gmail, and Google Docs as distributors or consumers of Hspell-derived Hebrew spell-checking data.

By 2004 the project described Hspell as gaining acceptance as the free-software Hebrew spell checker, and by 2006 it noted Fedora Extras packaging. The input metadata records continued package-manager presence in Homebrew, Debian, Fedora, Nix, Arch, and Ubuntu.

How it is used

The command-line tools include hspell, hspell-i, and multispell. The HOWTO documents editor and desktop integration, including LyX preferences, KDE spelling configuration, OpenOffice modules, Vim, Emacs, Mozilla, and mixed Hebrew-English checking.

For downstream projects, the important usage pattern is generated dictionaries and word lists: Hspell can feed Aspell, Hunspell/MySpell-style dictionaries, and applications that need Hebrew morphology rather than only command-line spell checking.

Why package nerds care

Hspell matters to package nerds because it is not merely a CLI wrapper around a dictionary. It is a source of linguistic data, generated word lists, and morphology that downstream distributions split into hspell, aspell-he, myspell-he, hunspell-he, development libraries, and GUI packages.

It is also a useful case study in packaging language resources: encoding issues, niqqud handling, personal dictionaries, generated dictionary formats, licensing of both programs and generated data, and distribution-specific integration all show up in the project's release history.

Timeline

• 2002: Release 0.1 published.
• 2003: Release 0.7 added a complete morphological analyzer.
• 2004: Hspell data was integrated into Aspell and MySpell/OpenOffice-style workflows.
• 2005: Release 0.9 improved personal dictionary support and Aspell/MySpell generation.
• 2006: Release 1.0 declared the vocabulary mature enough for most users.
• 2012: Release 1.2 switched the project license to AGPL.
• 2017: Release 1.4 followed the older niqqud-less spelling standard after a new Academy standard was announced.

Related projects

• Related projects include Aspell, Hunspell, MySpell, OpenOffice Hebrew spell-checking, Firefox Hebrew dictionaries, HSpell GUI, Proxpeller, Java wrappers, Hebstem, and Hebmorph.

Sources

• https://hspell.sourceforge.net/
• https://hspell.sourceforge.net/Hspell-HOWTO.html
• https://hspell.sourceforge.net/WHATSNEW
• https://hspell.sourceforge.net/download.html
• https://hspell.sourceforge.net/oldnews.html