Section D.2 Aspell
Aspell is a spell-checker which you can easily configure to skip every piece of text used as a name of an XML element, and to skip PreTeXt elements that are likely to contain text that is not really made up of words and sentences. For example, the element
<chapter> might not be flagged by some mainstream spell checkers, but most likely the element <mdash/> will be flagged by every spell checker, including the default configuration of Aspell. And your <m> elements are full of LaTeX, not words. Unfortunately, Aspell will not follow your xi:xinclude directives, so you need to run it against each of your files if you have modularized your source. A command-line invocation would like like:aspell -c ~/aota/src/fish.xml
Installation on Linux should be straightforward through your distribution’s package manager. On a Mac, the executable, and a dictionary for your language, can be installed easily via MacPorts (
[provisional cross-reference: macports]). Recent improvements on Windows (ca. 2019-06-06) perhaps imply that WSL or the Ubuntu Linux install may provide an easy avenue. Please report steps that result in a successful Windows installation, so we can include them here.Configuration is achieved via a “hidden” file at the top of your home directory, namely , so that all element names, attributes, etc. will not be checked. The remainder is a suggested list of PreTeXt elements to skip. Suggestions for additions are welcome here.
.aspell.conf. A Mac will try to keep you away from hidden files, which are the ones whose name begins with a period. Let SublimeText give you an assist here. In Listing D.2.1 we show a first run at a useful configuration file. You definitely want to add the SGML filter, since this is what tells Aspell that you are working on XML files1
SGML is the precursor of XML.
add-filter sgml
# elements with lots of code
# but not "pre", since it is like a "p"
add-sgml-skip c
add-sgml-skip cd
add-sgml-skip program
add-sgml-skip console
add-sgml-skip sage
# image formats
add-sgml-skip latex-image
add-sgml-skip asymptote
add-sgml-skip sageplot
# elements that display XML elements
add-sgml-skip tag
add-sgml-skip tage
add-sgml-skip attr
# initialisms and friends
add-sgml-skip init
add-sgml-skip acro
add-sgml-skip abbr
# math (latex)
add-sgml-skip m
add-sgml-skip me
add-sgml-skip men
add-sgml-skip md
add-sgml-skip mdn
add-sgml-skip usage # in "notation"
# not really content, by and large
add-sgml-skip docinfo
You can run Aspell in a sort of batch, non-interactive mode by adding the
-a switch and then providing your source on standard input and directing results from standard output. But I do not find it very useful.
