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I have a personal spelling dictionary that I'd like to share between a laptop running Windows + Cygwin, and a desktop computer that runs Debian.

Emacs(21) comes with ispell integration, M-x ispell-buffer.

Unfortunately, on Cygwin, ispell is a compatibility script that calls aspell internally, whereas Debian installs true ispell. And their personal dictionary formats are not compatible.

What do I do now? I can install aspell on Debian fine enough, but how do I make emacs use it?

  • Can I install a package on Debian that gives me the compatibility /usr/bin/ispell? There doesn't seem to be any in Debian's repository.
  • Can I somehow make emacs call aspell instead of ispell when starting its external spellchecker? There doesn't seem to be a M-x aspell-buffer, and I can't find any variable that would let me change the behavior of ispell-buffer.
  • Would biting the bullet and upgrading to a later emacs major version help?
  • Or something completely different?

Currently I've winged it by uninstalling ispell on Debian and copying the compatibility script from Cygwin to /usr/local/bin, but that feels very ad-hoc and manual.

hmakholm left over Monica
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    It is difficult to read a post that begins with: "I am using a significantly outed version of Emacs from several years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, which is undoubtedly different in many ways to the current version." Please consider upgrading to Emacs 25. In addition, have a look at the variable `ispell-program-name` -- e.g., `(setq ispell-program-name "/path/to/aspell")` If you want to programmatically switch the path to a different program or lcoation depending upon the operating system, you can query the variable `system-type` and/or query the function `x-server-version`. – lawlist Nov 20 '16 at 18:30

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