[Debian-hebrew-package] A Message To All Debian Aspell Dictionary Maintainers

[Kevin Atkinson]

You are receiving this email, and are on the aspell-debian-dict at gnu.org
mailing list, because you are responsible for maintaining one or more
Aspell dictionaries for Debian.  This sole purpose of this mailing list is
to provide a convenient means for me to contact you.  It is a private
mailing list and should be low volume.

Unlike many other distributions, Debian Aspell dictionaries are generally
built from the upstream source version, rather than the official Aspell
dictionary packages. I do not have a problem with this per-say, however I
ask that you verify that the dictionary package generated from source is
the same the one from the official dictionary.  And if it is different in
any way you investigate the cause of the difference.  You should check the
contents of language data files, such as the affix and phonet file, as
well as the dictionary (ie the words) itself.  This is important since
some times I make corrections to the source dictionary, because, in some
cases the dictionary created with "make aspell" target has errors.  I try
to inform the upstream authors of what I did, however, in some cases the
changes don't make it back into the upstream version for one reason or
another.

If the reason you are generating it from source is because the official
Aspell dictionary is not being kept up to date I ask that you consider
also maintaining the official Aspell dictionary.  With nearly 80 official
dictionaries available for Aspell I do not have the time to keep tabs on
all of them.  The packaging format for Aspell dictionaries is fairly
simple and with a little bit of extra effort you should be able to create
an official Aspell dictionary at the same time you create a new Debian
one.  I will be more than willing to help you along the way. I realize
that this is above and beyond the call of duty, however, I would really
appreciate it.

That all for now.  I look forward to hearing back from all of you.