Subject: Configuring PINE to detect the spell checker..

From: "Mike A. Harris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 22:54:57 -0500 (EST)

I'd like to set up PINE so that it looks for aspell, and if it
doesn't find it, it gracefully falls back to ispell.

I've tried various things to no avail so far.  Here is my latest
non-working effort.

speller=_TEST("test -e /usr/bin/aspell")_ /usr/bin/aspell --mode=email check,
        _TEST("test -e /usr/bin/ispell")_ /usr/bin/ispell

The above doesn't work.  Nor does:

speller=_TEST("test -e /usr/bin/aspell")_ /usr/bin/aspell --mode=email,
        _TEST("test -e /usr/bin/ispell")_ /usr/bin/ispell

I've followed the syntax of how the browsers are fired off which
seems to work:

# List of programs to open Internet URLs (e.g. http or ftp references).
url-viewers=_TEST("test -e /usr/bin/netscape -a -n '${DISPLAY}'")_ /usr/bin/netscape,
        _TEST("test -e /usr/bin/lynx")_ /usr/bin/lynx

but it doesn't seem to work with 'speller'.  I'm assuming I need
some token in there or something..

If there is no simple solution, I'll make a shell script called
"pine-spellcheck" which wraps up various spell checkers.
Actually, this might simplify it the most.

Any suggestions?  Please respond ASAP.

Thanks,
TTYL

----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"A Firewall is really much like a sophisticated traffic cop; it detects and
stops unauthorized or suspicious movement in or out of the network. But
security is more than a Firewall; it's a process. You can't just put in a
Firewall and think you're secure."

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---

From: Jeff Franklin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:01:45 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

> Any suggestions?  Please respond ASAP.

Yeah. Upgrade to 4.33.  Quoting is broken in 4.32.

Jeff

-- 
Jeff Franklin <[email-masked]>
Networks and Distributed Computing   University of Washington

---

From: "Mike A. Harris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 13:10:11 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Jeff Franklin wrote:

>Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:01:45 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
>From: Jeff Franklin <[email-masked]>
>To: Mike A. Harris <[email-masked]>
>Cc: Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
>Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>Subject: Re: Configuring PINE to detect the spell checker..
>

This _IS_ PINE 4.33... sorry I wasn't clear.  Try the above in
4.33 and you get "Speller abnormally exited" errors.

Microsoft (noun).  C+ students programming in c++.
  -- Mike DeMaria

---

From: Jeff Franklin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:38:09 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

> 4.33 and you get "Speller abnormally exited" errors.

Sorry, I wasn't thinking clearly.  The speller variable currently doesn't
recognize tokens, but we've put it on the list of things to consider for a
future release.

Jeff

---

From: "Mike A. Harris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 14:10:17 -0500 (EST)

>recognize tokens, but we've put it on the list of things to consider for a

Ok.  I've solved the problem by making a pine-spellcheck wrapper
script which handles different spell checkers.  Works great and
shall appear in my next series of RPM packages.  Those using Red
Hat 5.x/6.x should be able to use the packages in rawhide with a
rebuild from source with no problems, and have a working spell
checker out of the box once again.

Should appear in rawhide RSN.

Thanks Jeff!
TTYL

----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike A. Harris  -  Linux advocate  -  Free Software advocate
          This message is copyright 2001, all rights reserved.
  Views expressed are my own, not necessarily shared by my employer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So, if anybody wants to have free hardware sent to them, don't call me, but 
instead write your own operating system.  It has worked every time for me.

                                           Linus Torvalds

---

From: Ivan Zakharyaschev <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:34:44 +0300 (MSK)

> recognize tokens, but we've put it on the list of things to consider

A humble suggestion on spell checking in Pine:

I would appreciate it, if there was a possibility of choosing the language
before starting to check the spelling of the message. For example, I could
write formal letters in English, Russian, or German and check the
spelling.

-- 
Best regards,
      Ivan Z.

---

From: "Mike A. Harris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 02:56:34 -0500 (EST)

>write formal letters in English, Russian, or German and check the

This would be a feature of the spell checking software I believe.
I would think the spell checker should check your locale and use
the language appropriae for the locale you are using.  I don't
use the spell checker myself though (or I would have spelled
approprate correctly above) so I'm not sure how such would work.

If you use Red Hat Linux, please fill out a request for
enhancement in bugzilla (like a bug, only put "enhancement" for
severity).   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/

TTYL

-- 
Mike A. Harris                  Shipping/mailing address:
OS Systems Engineer             190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie,
Red Hat Inc.                    Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3
http://www.redhat.com           Phone: (705)949-2136

---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 08:22:59 -0800 (PST)

*** Mike A. Harris ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:

:) >A humble suggestion on spell checking in Pine:
:) >
:) >I would appreciate it, if there was a possibility of choosing the language
:) >before starting to check the spelling of the message. For example, I could
:) >write formal letters in English, Russian, or German and check the
:) >spelling.
:)
:) This would be a feature of the spell checking software I believe.
:) I would think the spell checker should check your locale and use
:) the language appropriae for the locale you are using.  I don't
:) use the spell checker myself though (or I would have spelled
:) approprate correctly above) so I'm not sure how such would work.

Almost agree, I send e-mails in two languages, if I could I would like to
be able to choose the speller (or the parameters passed to the speller),
from a menu after pressing "^T". Of course all of this should be
configurable so that for other people pressing "^T" would work as it does
today.

-- 
Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/

---

From: Ivan Zakharyaschev <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 01:08:39 +0300 (MSK)

Mike, Eduardo, sorry for a bit delayed answer.

> :) approprate correctly above) so I'm not sure how such would work.

The solution based only on locale settings wouldn't be full enough (though
it would be a reasonablee default behaviour of the spell checker/mail
client to assume that the message is in the language that corresponds to
the locale): all the locale stuff (as I see it) is much more devoted to
the way how an application interacts with the user than to deciding on
what national attributes the processed data has. The locale makes a
program speak in such a language and format its output in such a way that
is best understood by the user. In contrast, m17n support requires that a
program can work with data in different languages (while the interface can
stay in one language). I believe Emacs or TeX processor are rather good
examples of such multilingualised programs: they can work with documents
in different languages independent of the locale. Various Internet tools
(browsers, mail agents) should be also: they have to deal with content
that comes from (or goes to) all around the world. Should I change the
locale for reading a document in a foreign language? Certainly not.
Should the menu items change from one language into another when I'm
reading a message written in another language? No. Should I change the
locale or should the interface change when I'm composing a message in one
or another language (probably foreign)? The answer must be the same as for
the case of reading a message: no.

The conclusion: it would be nice if there were means of specifying the
language of the message being composed other than locale settings or
simply none at all.

> configurable so that for other people pressing "^T" would work as it

Yeah, of course. And here another discussion can be started: one solution
for the problem could be an external wrapper-script around the spell
checker that asks you about the parameters. Another solution would be to
embed the selection into Pine, so that the "look-and-feel" of Pine isn't
lost (in contrast to the first varinat). But the second solution is harder
to implement: one has to patch the enormous sources of Pine. It's a pity
that it isn't very modular.

And the same kind of problems arise with other features like gpg/pgp
support for Pine: I would prefer to have a signing module for Pine that
looks just like all the rest of it (the same style of the menus etc.).

In fact, the statement that Pine isn't modular at all isn't true: the
source is not extremely difficult to extend with new features (for
example, now I'm using a Pine patched by a friend of mine and me so that
it is able to recode messages between various Russian encodings -- we have
about 5 of them :-( ). But the thing I would like to see is the
possibility of dynamic loading modules for Pine.

Anyway, I have to stop talking now. And go make real things for i18n and
m17n ;-)

-- 
Best regards,
      Ivan Z.