Just wanted to post a short howto on installing aspell and a dictionary in Ubuntu. It seems I couldn't find the information quickly and it was kind of obscure. Hope this helps other people.
From the command line:
$ sudo apt-get install aspell aspell-en
This installs aspell and the English dictionaries available. For a list of other dictionaries, click here:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/aspell-dictionary
Once you've got it installed, set up the configuration in Moodle:
First under Administration->System Paths put the path to aspell (should be /usr/bin/aspell. When you save the settings, a "check mark" will appear next to the path if it can be seen by moodle.
Next (important) you have to enable the spell checker in the HTML Editor. Go to Appearance->HTML Editor and click the checkbox for the spelling checker and also select a default dictionary (system will try to use the user's native language if available, but defaults to this dictionary otherwise).
That should force the ABC/Check icon to appear in the moodle editor everywhere it is available in your site.
I have Hardy Heron in production running moodle 1.9.4+ and the spelling checker works great. Good luck to you!
Hi Thom,
Thanks for your how-to guide to installing aspell in Ubuntu.
I've added a link to this thread in the System paths and Step-by-step Install Guide for Ubuntu documentation so others can find it easily.
Thanks for your how-to guide to installing aspell in Ubuntu.
I've added a link to this thread in the System paths and Step-by-step Install Guide for Ubuntu documentation so others can find it easily.
Awesome.. Works like a charm!!
Thank you for the write-up!
Thank you for the write-up!
In reply to Kyle Johnson
Re: HowTo: Installing aspell in Ubuntu (with dictionary)
by Thomas Bachert -
How is this suppose to work with regards to foreign languages? I am running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) with Aspell v0.60.5 and Perl v5.8.8. I read Aspell's documentation, as well as Moodle's, and installed all of the necessary language packs. From what I understand the way it is suppose to work is you enter text in the html editor, you select the language from the drop down menu, and click the Spellchecker button. For every misspelled word you should have a choice as to which word you would want to replace it with. I only get choices from the en_us dictionary. I installed using the command;
sudo apt-get install aspell aspell-en aspell-es aspell-de aspell-it aspell-fr
sudo apt-get install aspell aspell-en aspell-es aspell-de aspell-it aspell-fr
Thom
Thanks for the post - I was having some problems after changing to Ubuntu -> your fix was right on!