Vim Spell Checking: Syntax Highlighting, Scripting, and Spell File Generation

digit is ignored, unless the word as a whole is recognized. Thus if "3D" is a word and "D" is not then "3D" is recognized as a word, but if "3D" is not a word then only the "D" is marked as bad. Hex numbers in the form 0x12ab and 0X12AB are recognized. WORD COMBINATIONS It is possible to spell-check words that include a space. This is used to recognize words that are invalid when used by themselves, e.g. for "et al.". It can also be used to recognize "the the" and highlight it. The number of spaces is irrelevant. In most cases a line break may also appear. However, this makes it difficult to find out where to start checking for spelling mistakes. When you make a change to one line and only that line is redrawn Vim won't look in the previous line, thus when "et" is at the end of the previous line "al." will be flagged as an error. And when you type "the<CR>the" the highlighting doesn't appear until the first line is redrawn. Use |CTRL-L| to redraw right away. "[s" will also stop at a word combination with a line break. When encountering a line break Vim skips characters such as "*", '>' and '"', so that comments in C, shell and Vim code can be spell checked. SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING *spell-syntax* Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be done: 1. everywhere default 2. in specific items use "contains=@Spell" 3. everywhere but specific items use "contains=@NoSpell" For the second method adding the @NoSpell cluster will disable spell checking again. This can be used, for example, to add @Spell to the comments of a program, and add @NoSpell for items that shouldn't be checked. Also see |:syn-spell| for text that is not in a syntax item. VIM SCRIPTS If you want to write a Vim script that does something with spelling, you may find these functions useful: spellbadword() find badly spelled word at the cursor spellsuggest() get list of spelling suggestions soundfold() get the sound-a-like version of a word SETTING 'spellcapcheck' AUTOMATICALLY *set-spc-auto* After the 'spelllang' option has been set successfully, Vim will source the files "spell/LANG.vim" and "spell/LANG.lua" in 'runtimepath'. "LANG" is the value of 'spelllang' up to the first comma, dot or underscore. This can be used to set options specifically for the language, especially 'spellcapcheck'. The distribution includes a few of these files. Use this command to see what they do: > :next $VIMRUNTIME/spell/*.vim Note that the default scripts don't set 'spellcapcheck' if it was changed from the default value. This assumes the user prefers another value then. DOUBLE SCORING *spell-double-scoring* The 'spellsuggest' option can be used to select "double" scoring. This mechanism is based on the principle that there are two kinds of spelling mistakes: 1. You know how to spell the word, but mistype something. This results in a small editing distance (character swapped/omitted/inserted) and possibly a word that sounds completely different. 2. You don't know how to spell the word and type something that sounds right. The edit distance can be big but the word is similar after sound-folding. Since scores for these two mistakes will be very different we use a list for each and mix them. The sound-folding is slow and people that know the language won't make the second kind of mistakes. Therefore 'spellsuggest' can be set to select the preferred method for scoring the suggestions. ============================================================================== 3. Generating a spell file *spell-mkspell* Vim uses a binary file format for spelling. This greatly speeds up loading the word list and keeps it small. *.aff* *.dic* *Myspell* You can create a Vim spell file from the .aff and .dic files that Myspell uses. Myspell is used by OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. The OpenOffice .oxt files are zip files which contain the .aff and .dic files. You should be able to

This section covers several aspects of Vim spell checking. It details how syntax highlighting can be configured to control where spell checking occurs using "contains=@Spell" and "contains=@NoSpell". It also lists useful Vim script functions for spelling, such as `spellbadword()`, `spellsuggest()`, and `soundfold()`. The section explains how the 'spellcapcheck' option is automatically set based on the 'spelllang' option by sourcing "spell/LANG.vim" and "spell/LANG.lua". Additionally, it introduces 'spellsuggest' for "double" scoring to account for mistyped words and phonetically similar words, providing methods for both types of errors. Finally, it explains how to generate Vim spell files from Myspell's .aff and .dic files.