Hunspell

Hunspell: Open-Source Spell Checking Library

Hunspell is an open-source spell checking library and program designed for languages with complex morphology and orthography, supporting several algorithms for suggestion and auto-correction.

What is Hunspell?

Hunspell is an open-source spell checking library and program originally based on MySpell. It was designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding or character encoding, such as Hungarian, Polish, or French.

Hunspell utilizes morphological analysis in its spellchecking to handle the intricacies of various languages better than simple lexicographic comparisons. It supports using multiple dictionaries at once, like dictionaries for different languages or vocabularies. The suggestion engine in Hunspell implements several algorithms for properly ranking replacement suggestions for misspelled words.

Hunspell is used as an underlying spellchecking engine in many major software projects and platforms, including OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Mac OS X, and more. It has extensive support for international languages and special characters. Hunspell text word lists can be created and extended by users with knowledge of the language morphology.

Some key features of Hunspell include:

• Morphological analysis and generation
• Complex word compounding
• Affix merging, removal, and addition
• Support for language alphabets with diacritics and special characters
• Customizable suggestion ranking algorithms
• Easily extensible dictionary text files

Hunspell Features

Official Links