Mystic BBS Wiki

Note: Instructions and files needed can also be found on the Downloads page of the website:

http://www.mysticbbs.com/downloads/mystic_spellcheck_v2.zip

Mystic BBS's full screen message editor has the ability to perform on-the-fly spell checking and word suggestions.

While a user is entering a message, Mystic will perform checks on their typing and will highlight misspelled words and make suggestions to help guide the user to a correct spelling all in real time as they type. With the simple press of a hotkey, Mystic will pop up a list box of suggested words where the user can select the correct word. Mystic will then take the selected word and change the spelling in the actual message.

Mystic's spelling engine allows for multiple dictionaries to be loaded together, so if you have Spanish as your primary language, you can also load a dictionary of English words at the same time.

Mystic allows a custom dictionary file in plain text that can be used to easily add common words to any dictionary that is loaded regardless of its language. This can be very useful to include various BBS terms or acronyms which may not be found in an actual dictionary.

Mystic uses the Hunspell engine to assist in the capabilities described above. Hunspell is the same engine used by many very well known products such as the OS X operating system, Open Office, FireFox, and Chrome to name a few. Because of its wide usage, there are many existing dictionaries available for many different languages and dialects of languages.

If English is your native language, then you will easily find dictionaries for US, Canadian, UK, and Australian dialects of English. The same holds true for many languages.

In order for spell checking to enable, Hunspell must be installed and at least one dictionary must exist in Mystic's data directory.

Windows:

Copy appropriate .DLL into root Mystic directory or system lib path.  Note
that the 32-bit version of Mystic requires the 32-bit version of Hunspell,
and the 64-bit version of Mystic requires the 64-bit version of Hunspell.
 
For the 32-bit version, Mystic will be looking for libhunspell32.dll and
for the 64-bit version, Mystic will be looking for the libhunspell64.dll.
 
Copy the apropriate .dll into the root Mystic directory or somewhere else
in your Windows system that is configured in a way that will allow Mystic to
find it on startup.

Linux:

In Linux, Mystic looks for the existance of "libhunspell.so" somewhere in a
common library path.  For Ubuntu, this could already be installed by default
and Mystic may work out of the box without any installation other than
dictionary files.
 
If this is not true with the distribution you are using then you may need to
install it using a package manager.  For example:
 
	Raspbian Jessie/Ubuntu installation for Hunspell:
 
		sudo apt-get update
		sudo apt-get install libhunspell-dev
 
If the package installed does not already create a symbolic link so that
libhunspell.so exists, then you must create a symbolic link.  First, find
where the file exists:
 
	sudo find /usr -name libhunspell*
 
If you do not see a "libhunspell.so" file then you'll need to create a link
in that name and point it to where the Hunspell library is.  So if the find
above returns "/usr/lib/libhunspell-1.3.so.0" then you'd create a symbolic
link of that file which points to libhunspell.so:
 
	sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libhunspell-1.3.so.0 /usr/lib/libhunspell.so
 
After that you're all set with the Hunspell installation

Mac OSX:

OS X uses libhunspell itself, so every version of OS X comes with hunspell
already installed.  However, this is an older version of Hunspell (1.2.0)
while the current versions are in the 1.4.X iterations.
 
The 1.2.0 version to my knowledge does not support multiple dictionaries
so one may wish to install a later version.  For those who wish to install
the later versions, "Homebrew" can be used:
 
	First update Homebrew to the latest:
 
		brew update
 
	Next install hunspell:
 
		brew install hunspell
 
	To verify it installed type "hunspell --version" on a command prompt, you
	should see it print out a version which is currently 1.4.1.
 
Regardless of if you've just installed Hunspell or you want to use the default
OS X version, you'll need to locate where the Hunspell library is installed:
 
	sudo find /usr -name libhunspell*.dylib
 
Mystic looks for "libhunspell.dylib" which allows the Sysop to create a
symbolic link to whatever version of Hunspell is installed or they wish to
use.  Lets say the search above gives us a location of:
  	
	"/usr/local/lib/libhunspell-1.4.dylib"
 
In order for Mystic to find it, we need to create a symbolic link from the
actual file to the name that Mystic is looking for:
 
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libhunspell-1.4.dylib /usr/local/lib/libhunspell.dylib
 
Once that is done, Hunspell is ready to be used.