\" Enchant configuration man page
\"
\" Copyright (C) 2022-2024 Reuben Thomas
\"
\" This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
\" Lesser General Public License for more details.
\"
\" You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
\" along with this program; if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
\"
.TH ENCHANT 5
.SH NAME
Enchant \- enchant language tags, ordering files and personal word lists
.SH LANGUAGE TAGS
Enchant identifies dictionaries by their language tag. A language tag is
typically an IETF BCP 47 language tag of the form \fILANGUAGE_COUNTRY\fR;
for example, \fIen_US\fR or \fIzh_SG\fR. Multiple dictionaries may be used
together by giving a comma-separated list; for example \fIen_GB,fr_FR\fR.
This can be useful for checking multi-lingual text, or for using specialised
word lists for a particular subject, project or document (these might have
names such as \fIen-medical\fR or \fIen-my-novel\fR).
.SH ORDERING FILE
Enchant uses global and per-user ordering files named \fIenchant.ordering\fR
to decide which spelling provider to use for particular languages.
The per-user file takes precedence.
.PP
The ordering file takes the form \fIlanguage_tag:<comma-separated list of spelling
providers>\fR.
To see what dictionaries are available, run \fIenchant-lsmod-2\fR. \(oq*\(cq is
used to mean \(lquse this ordering for all languages, unless instructed otherwise.\(rq For example:
.IP
*:aspell,hunspell,nuspell
.br
en:aspell,hunspell,nuspell
.br
en_GB:hunspell,nuspell,aspell
.br
fr:hunspell,nuspell,aspell
.SH PERSONAL WORD LISTS
Personal word lists are simple plain text files with one word per line.
The name of the file starts with the language tag and ends \fI.dic\fR.
Each personal word list has a corresponding exclude file, ending in
\fI.exc\fR, which lists words that are found in the dictionary but that the
user wants to be considered invalid.
The files are stored in an Enchant configuration directory; see
.B FILES AND DIRECTORIES
below.
Lines starting with a hash sign \(oq#\(cq are ignored.
.SS SHARING PERSONAL WORD LISTS BETWEEN SPELL-CHECKERS
It is possible, and usually safe, to share Enchant\(cqs personal word lists
with other spelling checkers that use the same format (note that other
spell-checkers may not support comments!). The spell-checkers known to be
compatible are Hunspell, Nuspell and Ispell. (Although Enchant does not
support Ispell as a provider, it\(cqs still fine to share word lists with it.)
Other spell-checkers supported by Enchant are either incompatible, or have
no personal word list mechanism. There may well be yet other spell-checkers,
unknown to Enchant, that use the same format.
.PP
Some applications use Hunspell or Nuspell, but store the personal word list
under another name or in another location; Firefox and Thunderbird do this. Firefox
also seems to reorder its word list when updating it; again, this is OK, as
the result is still in the same format.
.PP
To share word lists with Enchant, find the other spelling checker\(cqs word
list file, e.g. \fI~/.hunspell_fr_FR\fR or \fI~/.config/nuspell/fr_FR\fR,
and merge it with the corresponding Enchant file, in this case
\fI~/.config/enchant/fr_FR.dic\fR. Use the following command, replacing
\fIENCHANT-DICT\fR and \fIOTHER-DICT\fR with the corresponding dictionary
file names:
.IP
cat ENCHANT-DICT OTHER-DICT | sort -u > merged.txt
.PP
Take a look at \fImerged.txt\fR to check the merge has worked, then
.IP
mv merged.txt ENCHANT-DICT
.br
rm OTHER-DICT
.br
ln -s OTHER-DICT ENCHANT-DICT
.PP
to replace the other dictionary file with a link to the Enchant dictionary,
again filling in the name of the dictionary files.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
The following variables affect the behavior of Enchant:
.TP
\fIENCHANT_CONFIG_DIR\fR
A directory in which Enchant should look for configuration files. See below.
.TP
\fIG_MESSAGES_DEBUG\fR
Enchant uses GLib's log functions, with the domain \fIlibenchant\fR, to
output messages useful for debugging. Setting \fIG_MESSAGES_DEBUG\fR to
\fIlibenchant\fR will cause Enchant to output debugging messages to standard
error. See the GLib documentation for more details.
.SH FILES AND DIRECTORIES
Enchant looks in the following places for user files, in decreasing order of precedence:
.TP
\fIENCHANT_CONFIG_DIR\fR
(If the environment variable is set.)
.TP
\fIXDG_CONFIG_HOME/enchant\fR (non-Windows systems)
Default: \fI~/.config/enchant\fR
.TP
\fICSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA\\enchant\fR (Windows systems)
Default: \fIC:\\Documents and Settings\\\fRusername\fI\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\enchant
.PP
Dictionaries for some providers are looked for in a subdirectory with the
same name as the provider, for example \fI~/.config/enchant/hunspell\fR.
Currently this works for Hspell, Hunspell, Nuspell and Voikko.
.PP
Providers also look in specific system directories, and in some cases and
user directories, for their dictionaries; see the documentation for each
provider.
.PP
In addition, Enchant looks in the following systems directories for ordering files:
.TP
\fI/etc/enchant-2\fR
(Or the equivalent location relative to the enchant library for a relocatable build.)
.TP
\fI/usr/share/enchant-2\fR
(Or the equivalent location relative to the enchant library for a relocatable build.)
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR enchant-2 (1),
.BR enchant-lsmod-2 (1)
.SH "AUTHOR"
Written by Dom Lachowicz and Reuben Thomas.