Re: ispell.el and pipes

[André A . Gomes]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: André A. Gomes <andremegafone@gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 17:42:53 +0300
>> 
>> In the beginning was Ispell (the spelling program) and ispell.el (the
>> Emacs interface).  The communication is via pipes or ptys.
>> 
>> But today there's Aspell (among others), which provides an external C
>> API.
>> 
>> Could Emacs leverage it?  What are the pros and cons of pipes/ptys and
>> the C API for Emacs' sake?
>
> The main con is that Someone™ will have to write the code to use the C
> API and integrate that into ispell.el.  There are also other cons:
>
>   . the C API provided by Aspell isn't shared by other spell-checkers
>     we support (AFAIK)
>   . using the C API will need Emacs to be linked against the Aspell
>     library, which makes the build requirements and procedures more
>     complex
>   . different versions of Aspell may introduce binary
>     incompatibilities, whose accommodation in Emacs will complicate
>     our own code

Makes sense.

Ispell.el is quite creepy.  I'm working on some fixes.


-- 
André A. Gomes
"Free Thought, Free World"