Re: spell make it work emacs on AppleMac

[Aleksandar Simic]

Hello Richard

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 3:50 AM, Richard Smith <null@void.com> wrote:

> On AppleMac "Air" - laptop - using as-installed emacs.
>
> ESC-x ispell not working - nor any other spell command.  Have lived
> for years without "spell" program in emacs
>
> Then couple of days ago, got surprise when accidentally pressed what
> must have been the ESC-tab command - and got spell-check on preceding
> word.
>

The default config for spell checking a word is M-$.

With default Emacs install that comes on OS X, ESC-TAB which is M-TAB runs
the command lisp-complete-symbol.

Not sure about your setup.

Maybe run M-x describe-key M-TAB to see what the key is bound on your Emacs.


> So ispell is installed?
>

What does "which ispell" tell you?


> Can I get it to work?
>

I don't think that ispell is installed by default. So you're left with the
option of installing a spell checker for Emacs for yourself.

I'd advise you to install aspell, because it can spell check camel cased
words.

See this about the different options:
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractiveSpell

And see this write up with further details:
http://blog.binchen.org/posts/what-s-the-best-spell-check-set-up-in-emacs.html

PS - does it make more sense to install a full unix?
> Miss GnuPlot, xfig, the GIMP, etc.
>

You have many options on how to install the software you mention above.
Look into Homebrew https://brew.sh/ and pkgsrc https://www.pkgsrc.org/

Hope that helps
Aleksandar