Libaspellso

libaspellso is the shared library component of the GNU Aspell project, providing programmatic access to spell-checking capabilities. On Unix-like systems it ships as libaspell.so and on Windows as a dynamic library such as libaspell.dll, allowing applications to embed the Aspell spell checker without embedding the full binary. The library exposes a C application programming interface (API) and can be used by programs written in C and C++, with bindings available for other languages.

The primary functions of libaspellso are to load dictionaries and affix rules for a given language, check whether a word exists in the active dictionary, and generate spelling suggestions. It supports personal dictionaries, language packs with multiple orthographies, and affix-based stemming and morphological rules to handle rich word formation. It is designed to be embedded in text editors, word processors, IDEs, and content management systems.

Architecturally, a host application creates a speller configuration object, initializes a speller instance, selects a language dictionary, and then uses the API to verify words and retrieve correction candidates. The design emphasizes incremental checks, memory efficiency, and the ability to operate in multi-threaded contexts.

Licensing and availability: libaspellso is part of the GNU Aspell project and is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) with the usual freedoms to modify and redistribute. Source code and release notes are maintained in the project repositories, with support for multiple languages and ongoing community contributions.

Impact: Libaspellso underpins many open-source text-processing tools and word processors, particularly in environments that prioritize free and multilingual spell-check support.