GNU Aspell

GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. The project can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker.

Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language. Unlike Ispell, Aspell can also easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special dictionary.

Aspell will also do its best to respect the current locale setting. Other advantages over Ispell include support for using multiple dictionaries at once and intelligently handling personal dictionaries when more than one Aspell process is open at once.

Aspell Dictionaries page: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/0index.html

Features:

• Is an actual library that other programs can link to instead of having to use it through a pipe.
• Does a much better job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than Ispell does or for that matter any other spell checker I have seen. If you know a spell checker that does a better job please let me know.
• Can learn from user's misspellings.
• Can easily check documents in UTF-8 without having to use a special dictionary.
• Has support for using multiple dictionaries at once.
• Is multiprocess intelligent. When a personal dictionary (or replacement list) is saved it will now first update the list against the dictionary on disk in case another process modified it.
• Can share the memory used in the main word list between processes.
• A better, more complete word list for the English language. Word lists are provided for American, British, and Canadian spelling. Special care has been taken to only include one spelling for each word in any particular word list. The word list included in Ispell by contrast only included support for American and British and also tends to included multiple spellings for a word which can mask some spelling errors.