Emacs 26.2 windows Hunspell setup

 Hunspell failed with default setup

With my shining new emacs26.2 setup, I am happy until trying to `M-$’ on a word.

I got following error message, it used to be work by just set ispell program to hunspell.

Starting new Ispell process hunspell with default dictionary...
split-string: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

After some check in my customization setting. nothing found.

install a copy of hunspell dictionary

At first I think it was caused by no hunspell dictionary. I downloaded en_US and en_CA hunspell dictionary from wordlist.sf.net project.

After put the .aff and .dic files into C:directory

I’ve also made a symbolic link from en_US ones by running the `mklink’ tool:

mklink default.aff en_US.aff
mklink default.dic en_US.dic

Err… hunspell does not work, still.

Time to read code

Dig into ispell.el I suprisingly find there’re lots of hunspell specific logic. Originally I was thinking hunspell support involves no elisp work.

Acturally ispell did many work to determind dictionary list for hunspell. And it seemed that my recently installed, shining new, chocolatey managed hunspell.portable is causing problem.

with azwinport, the hunspell command will determind installed dictionary correctly as shown bellow:

# bin\hunspell.exe -D
SEARCH PATH:
.;;C:\Hunspell\;c:\opt\nobody\.openoffice.org\3\user\wordbook;C:\Users\nobody\Downloads\hunspell-1.3.2-3-w32-bin\bin\..\share\hunspell;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.4\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.3\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.2\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.1\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.0\share\dict\ooo\
AVAILABLE DICTIONARIES (path is not mandatory for -d option):
C:\Hunspell\default
C:\Hunspell\en_CA
C:\Hunspell\en_US
C:\Users\nobody\Downloads\hunspell-1.3.2-3-w32-bin\bin\..\share\hunspell\default
C:\Users\nobody\Downloads\hunspell-1.3.2-3-w32-bin\bin\..\share\hunspell\en_GB
C:\Users\nobody\Downloads\hunspell-1.3.2-3-w32-bin\bin\..\share\hunspell\en_US
LOADED DICTIONARY:
C:\Hunspell\\default.aff
C:\Hunspell\\default.dic
Hunspell 1.3.2

With chocolatey managed hunspell, nothing but the default loaded one is reported.

# hunspell.exe -D -a .viminfo
SEARCH PATH:
.;;C:\Hunspell\;%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\OpenOffice.org 2\user\wordbook;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.4\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.3\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.2\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.1\share\dict\ooo\;C:\Program files\OpenOffice.org 2.0\share\dict\ooo\
AVAILABLE DICTIONARIES (path is not mandatory for -d option):
LOADED DICTIONARY:
C:\Hunspell\\default.aff
C:\Hunspell\\default.dic
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.2.06 (but really Hunspell 1.7.0)

fix it by provide the hunspell dict paths alist

finally I managed to run the hunspell spellchecker by add following lisp code into my .emacs.

(setq-default ispell-hunspell-dict-paths-alist
          '(
        ("default" "C:\\Hunspell\\default.aff")
        ("en_US" "C:\\Hunspell\\en_US.aff")
        ("en_CA" "C:\\Hunspell\\en_CA.aff")
        ))