Spell Check in Emacs on Mac

Question

I am not able to use Spell-Check in the Emacs on my Mac. I copied the .emacs file I had on my previous Fedora to my home folder in my Macbook. The ".emacs" has a line saying:

(global-set-key "\C-k" 'ispell)

When I type "control+k" in an open emacs terminal, I get the following error message in the minibuffer:

Searching for program: permission denied,/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/list/textmodes/ispell.elc

When I looked for this address, I found that there is no "list" folder inside the "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/" folder.

When I do "locate ispell.elc", I get the following results:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/textmodes/ispell.elc
/usr/local/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/textmodes/ispell.elc
/usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/textmodes/ispell.elc

How do I fix it?

You have at least two problems -- first, your permissions may need to be fixed -- second you need to install aspell (or another equivalent thereof). Or, perhaps you need aspell and you just configured the location of the spelling program to incorrectly -- i.e., ispell.elc does not contain a dictionary or executable to search the dictionary. You need something like this (after you install aspell): (setq-default ispell-program-name "/Users/HOME/.0.data/.0.emacs/elpa/bin/aspell") and (setq ispell-dictionary "english") and (setq flyspell-default-dictionary "english") — lawlist
As you may have already surmised, it is lisp not list -- so your .emacs file may have a typo. Feel free to right click on your application and reveal the packaged directories and familiarize yourself with the various directories inside. Also, perhaps start off with a tried and true self-contained Emacs build (i.e., not homebrew, not macports) -- emacsformacosx.com You can use macports or homebrew to install aspell, or install the developer tools for your Mac and build aspell, or there is another equivalent you'll find on Google that is a packaged spelling utility. — lawlist

Sean Perry Sean Perry · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-11T22:09:22

I have the following in my emacs config:

(defmacro WhenOSX (&rest body)
   `(if (eq system-type 'darwin)
        (progn ,@body)
       nil
     )
 )
(WhenOSX
 (setq ispell-program-name "/usr/local/bin/aspell")
 )

I install aspell via homebrew. The above macro lets me share my config across Linux, OSX, and others.

https://github.com/shaleh/dot-files/tree/master/emacs.d has my Emacs config containing bits I have gathered from around the web over the years. Enjoy.

Spell Check in Emacs on Mac

1 Answers