Arabic Spellchecker

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

A recent post [1] made to the 'doc' list asked about Arabic spellchecker
status with regard to OpenOffice.org.  I think the topic is rather broad
and important enough to address it on our 'general' mailing-list.  So here
goes...

There has be much said regarding this topic though I'm not entirely sure
where we stand with regard to an arabic spell-checker in general.  I know
that duali [2] was attempting to fill this void though the project has
been dead for awhile (is it still even relevant any longer ?).  Then
there was Baghdad [3] from Mr. Sameer and later a patch and some thoughts
on actually using aspell [4] (an extremely common spell checker that most 
applications/tools use).  Later I was told about Ayaspell [5] though I
have no information on it _at all_ and I'm not sure its authors are aware
of the various other efforts (someone should contact them for an update
on where they are and what they are planning).

Personally, I think getting Arabic support into aspell would be the
preferred solution instead of re-inventing the wheel but again I don't
know where that stands and last I was briefed on the topic that it was
experimental and that we weren't 100% certain it will fully function
(something about its dictionary not being complete, etc).  Maybe the
solution lies with the aspell approach using Ayaspell's wordlist or
roots or ....

Sorry for any confusion, but I just thought to mention all I know regarding
this important topic in hopes of bringing this to resolution sooner rather
than later.

Any other relevant news regarding this topic ?

[1] http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2006/October/msg00016.html
[2] http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Duali
[3] http://baghdad.foolab.org/
[4] http://foolab.org/node/1482
[5] http://ayaspell.blogspot.com

Salam.

 - Nadim


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