Talk:Ispell

Is there only one "ispell"

The article says that ispell is a program, and the external links section links to a version of ispell, but other parts of the article seem less clear about this.

Can someone confirm, is there just one version of ispell? And is it free software? And if yes, what's the licence? Thanks. Gronky 05:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

programmatic interface

Ispell pioneered the idea of a programmatic interface, which [...]

What's a programmatic interface? --Abdull 07:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Unclear about how to refer to the software

The cited "official site" for ispell(?) refers to the software in a multitude of ways. The title refers to it as "International Ispell", with a capital "I", however the following paragraph states that "The latest version of ispell is available for download as a gzipped tar file." (note the lowercase "i" and the lack of "international") The paragraph title "What Is Ispell and Why Do I Want It?" refers to it with the capital "I" but no "international". The man page of ispell refers to it as Ispell, with a capital "I". This is so frustrating! Which version should this article use? Emirps (talk) 16:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

It's "ispell" with a lowercase "i". The manual page capitalizes it at the beginning of a sentence and in titles, as is common English usage.

"International Ispell" is a more formal title used on the Web page because it was the first spelling checker to support multiple languages. That name also helps to distinguish it from earlier versions and from the misbegotten "ispell 4.0", which was a less capable (and long-vanished) fork that attempted to take over the "ispell" name. GKuenning (talk) 22:04, 21 July 2025 (UTC)