Thank you, Bennett and Tomoharu!
I finally got it to work, as follows:
* I checked that aspell is installed correctly using Bennett's
suggestion of searching for files hidden by the Mac GUI. Aspell
was there all right, as were the dictionary files. There are some
*.alias files, these are important, see below.
* I noticed that you have to set the language correctly in Lyx's
Document --> Settings. I also noticed that you have to place the
cursor in front of the section you wish to be spellchecked.
* I then used the Lyx --> Preferences --> Language Settings -->
Spellchecker to tell Lyx what spellchecker executable to use
(aspell, obviously). However, this alone still did not work even
if the language was correctly set in both the document settings
and the preferences. But I discovered that you can use any
"alternative language" simply by adding the appropriate alias
name. For example, I entered "swiss" since I have a "swiss.alias"
in my aspell folder, and the spellchecking followed along the
Swiss rules. I entered "deutsch" or "british" and got the
according results. So everything works fine now.
So there's no need for fink now, but I may give a try next time :-).
Cheers,
Christian
Bennett Helm wrote:
On Jun 10, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Christian Liesen wrote:
Hello,
I'm experiencing a problem with installing aspell on Mac OS X 10.4.6.
I followed these instructions by the book:
http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/MacSpelling
What happens is that I end up with two aspell folders on my desktop
(one with aspell itself labeled "aspell-0.60.4", another one with the
desired dictionary labeled "aspell6-en-6.0-0"). These folders contain
files that obviously were generated when running the configure-,
make- and sudo make installation-processes, since their date is today.
There are no other aspell folders anywhere on my HDD, except for
these two.
I reconfigured Lyx 1.4.1, but it does not recognize aspell at all.
Instead it says that "Error: The file
"/usr/local/lib/aspell-0.60/ngerman" can not be opened for reading.
There is no file named "ngerman" anywhere on my computer. What's
going on here? Did I miss something?
Most likely, the files have been installed; it's just that they are
hidden by the Mac GUI. You can check to see if they're really there by
going to the Finder and selecting Go > Go to Folder ..., and then
typing in /usr/local/lib to the dialog that pops up. If you don't find
an aspell directory there, something went wrong with the installation.
Also, double check to make sure that aspell is selected from within
LyX's preferences (LyX > Preferences > Spellchecker > Spellchecker
executable).
Note that in what you've described, you've installed aspell6-en-6.0-0
-- an English dictionary. LyX is apparently looking for a German
dictionary, which it reports it cannot find. If you're spellchecking
German text (i.e., text identified as German within LyX), you'll need
to install the appropriate dictionary.
Bennett
