Emacs cannot find flyspell/ispell

emacs spell-checking flyspell
TakeS picture TakeS · Jun 15, 2013 · Viewed 15.1k times · Source

On my Mac (Snow Leopard, 10.6.8), I'm using a modified version of Emacs 24.2 provided here to utilize Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) from the downloads page. Emacs works, but I haven't yet been able to get a spell checker to work.

To rectify this, I'm following the instructions from this page to download flyspell. I copied the flyspell.el file into my /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp directory, which is apparently the directory of my emacs load path (note that, for instance, the auctex.el file is located in that directory).

Then, I modified my .emacs file by adding:

(autoload 'flyspell-mode "flyspell" "On-the-fly spelling checker." t)
(autoload 'flyspell-delay-command "flyspell" "Delay on command." t)
(autoload 'tex-mode-flyspell-verify "flyspell" "" t)
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-flyspell)

When I open a .tex file, and use M-x flyspell-mode, I can "auto-complete" it (i.e. by pressing tab it gives me the correct flyspell options) but when I press RET I get:

Searching for program: no such file or directory, ispell

None of the solutions posed in this question or this question worked, so I'm not sure what the issue is here. Does anyone have ideas or has encountered this problem before?

Answer

lunaryorn picture lunaryorn · Jun 15, 2013

Please, please read the documentation provided by Emacs itself before trying arbitrary instructions from random websites.

Emacs 24.2 includes Flyspell. You must not explicitly install it. If you do so, undo this, that is, delete flyspell.el from /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp. At best, delete /Applications/Emacs.app completely, and re-install it, to start from scratch.

However, Flyspell needs a spell checking tool, which is not included in Emacs. The error message tells you that you have no such tool installed.

You need to install the ASpell spell checker. You can install it with homebrew with brew install aspell.

Related questions

emacs on mac os x, how to get spell check to work

I'm moving from Windows to Mac, and I've spent the whole night trying to get emacs to work. I've installed GNU emacs and simply copied over my Windows .emacs file, which seems to work ok, except for spell check. I …

Read More
How do I make Git use the editor of my choice for commits?

I would prefer to write my commit messages in Vim, but it is opening them in Emacs. How do I configure Git to always use Vim? Note that I want to do this globally, not just for a single project.

Read More
Differences between Emacs and Vim

Without getting into a religious argument about why one is better than the other, what are the practical differences between Emacs and Vim? I'm looking to learn one or the other, but I realize the learning curve for each is …

Read More