The win32 binary is really not intended for a full-fledged email
environment; nano does not contain its own spell checking program, it
just invokes 'spell' or 'ispell' under the covers.  If you were to
install a win32 binary of ispell you could probably get the nano
binary to work with that but I'm not aware of any such binaries.  My
advice would be if you're looking to use nano for real email editing,
I would install it via cygwin (http://sourceware.org/cygwin/) which
would allow you to get ispell or spell binaries installed as well.

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 10:30, John Goche<johngoche99 <at> googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have downloaded the nano text editor (a clone of the former
> pico text editor that used to be distributed with pine, an
> internet mail program and newgroup reader developed at
> the University of Washington). I have downloaded nano from:
>
> http://www.nano-editor.org/
>
> I have downloaded the zip file containing the Windows
> executable file. On the nano main screen, in the lower
> left hand corner appears the [^T To Spell] option to run
> the spell checker. However when I press CTRL-T the
> response on the bottom of the screen is:
>
> [ Error writing temp file: No such file or directory ] .
>
>
> Do I have to install a dictionary file somewhere on Windows
> Vista for it to work? Where do I get the dictionary file from
> and exactly where does it need to be for nanoto find it?
>
> I have checked the nano FAQ at the nano website but found no answers. Could
> someone kindly tell me how I can fix the problem I am experiencing?
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> John Goche
>

> _______________________________________________
> Help-nano mailing list
> Help-nano <at> gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-nano
>
>

John Goche wrote:
> Thank you for your reply...
>
> Wouldn't it be better if nano for windows supported spell checking using
> a simple dictionary file such as the traditional /usr/dict/words found in
> Unix environments (this file usually contains a list of words with one
> word per line), thus doing away with the need to rely on a separate
> program such as ispell?

That would not be the "unix way":
As Doug McIlroy summarized "...Write programs that do one thing and do
it well. Write programs to work together..."

Perhaps there is already a spell checker for windows that serves a
similar purpose?

--
Eitan Adler
"Security is increased by designing for the way humans actually behave."
-Jakob Nielsen

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 9:16 AM, John Goche<johngoche99 <at> googlemail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for your contribution to this discussion.
> It would be nice indeed if there were a text speller
> which could be used instead of ispell. However,
> fist of all nano should have a screen where you
> can tell nano which program to use to carry out
> the text spelling, whether ispell or some other
> program. Second, it appears to me that if another
> spell checker is used instead of ispell, than it must
> support the same command line interface in order
> to be compatible with nano.

I agree on the second point, which is why I suggested using a full
unix-like environment like cygwin; nano is a unix program and thus
expects other unix programs to provide the functionality that it does
not provide.   Nano lets you specify an alternate spell program in the
traditional unix way: via the command line. You're not going to get
away from the fact that nano is built for Unix, so I suggested
embracing that fact.

I'm not interested in bundling ispell, or spell, or even just
/usr/shard/dict/words into nano just for the sake of win32; I may as
well just bundle all of cygwin up and call that the nano win32
version.  Except cygwin already does that so I'd just be duplicating
effort.  Let me know if you are aware of a win32-native spell check
programs that provide a list of misspelled words on stdout when they
exit and I'll consider adding support for them into the nano win32
binary.  If you're volunteering to contribute other fixes to the win32
distribution I welcome the patches.

> As a curiosity, assuming the name "ispell" is
> included into nano and the fork() system call
> is used to launch it, where does nano look
> for ispell in terms of the absolute path to
> the spell checker?

See above, probably the windows system PATH environment variable.

> Also, as an aside, does anyone know whether
> the nano screen interface for window is also
> compiled with GNU ncurses just like the
> Linux counterpart?

No, nano is built with PDCurses.(see the README.TXT that comes with the binary).

>
> Thanks,
>
> John Goche
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Eitan Adler <eitanadlerlist <at> gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps there is already a spell checker for windows that serves a
>> similar purpose?
>>
>> --
>> Eitan Adler
>> "Security is increased by designing for the way humans actually behave."
>> -Jakob Nielsen
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> Help-nano mailing list
> Help-nano <at> gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-nano
>
>

> Thank you for your contribution to this discussion.
> It would be nice indeed if there were a text speller
> which could be used instead of ispell. However,
> fist of all nano should have a screen where you
> can tell nano which program to use to carry out
> the text spelling, whether ispell or some other
> program.

I do actually have a patch that does this. However it currently replaces
the spell check program. I will provide my patch to this list when I
have both a spell checker and a generic "send through program".

Second, it appears to me that if another
> spell checker is used instead of ispell, than it must
> support the same command line interface in order
> to be compatible with nano.

Either that or just provide some method of telling nano what CLI options
 to use.