wordlists and ispell dictionaries transition announce

[Agustín Martín Domingo <agmartin@aq.upm.es>]

Hi all,

We are happy to announce that the transition to the new policy
for ispell dictionaries and wordlists will start next Monday
October 14th. Although some aspell stuff has been included in the
policy document the specified deadline does not affect aspell
dictionary packages, which can be worked later in a smooth way
without the need of a specific deadline. aspell dictionaries
maintainers are invited to collaborate in the full integration
of aspell into the policy.

During the process you might experience some inconsistencies, since
the new system is incompatible with the old one:

- New policy packages will not be installable until package
  dictionaries-common is installed, some days after that date.
  That way we expect to have most ispell dictionary and wordlist
  packages updated by the time it is installed.

- As soon as dictionaries-common is installed in the repository,
  it will conflict with all old style packages, so you will be
  prompted to remove them. Packages that are not updated will have
  a serious bug against them, so no need to file additional bugs.

What is new with this system?
=============================

1) Full debconf support.
2) [X]Emacs pop-up menus now work correctly for ispell and are
   rebuilt after installation of the ispell dictionary packages,
   showing only entries for installed dictionaries. This should
   work in all emacs flavors.
3) Jed support, in a similar manner as the emacsen support.
4) Mutt support has also been added, which relies on a ispell-wrapper
   script, which can also be used standalone (it sets automatically
   the -w and -d options of ispell according to the language chosen
   by the user).
5) pspell support. ispell dictionaries can now be used cleanly by all
   programs using pspell, like abiword. This also forced to recompile
   ispell with MAXSTRINGCHARS=128, so old ispell hashes will no
   longer work.

Where do I get more info about the system?
==========================================

Please visit the web site at:

    http://dict-common.sourceforge.net/

After dictionaries-common packages are uploaded to Debian, a copy of
the policy will be available at dictionaries-common-dev package. Above
mentioned web site will then be used for experimental versions.


We hope you like the new system,

  Your dictionaries-common team:

  Rafael Laboissière,
  David Coe,
  Agustín Martín Domingo