aspell: Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes

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1 4.4.4 Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes
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1 In order to understand what these suggestion modes do, a basic
11 understanding of how Aspell works is required.  For that, see ⇒
 Aspell Suggestion Strategy.
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1    The suggestion modes are as follows.
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1 ultra
1      This method will use the fastest method available to come up with
1      decent suggestions.  This currently means that it will look for
1      soundslikes within one edit distance.  This method will also use
1      the replacement table if one is available.  In this mode Aspell
1      gets about 87% of the words from my small test kernel of
1      misspelled words.  (Go to `http://aspell.net/test' for more info
1      on the test kernel as well as comparisons of this version of
1      Aspell with previous versions and other spell checkers.)
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1 fast
1      This method is currently identical to `ultra'.
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1 normal
1      This mode will use what ever method is necessary to return good
1      suggestions in most cases in a reasonable amount of time.  This
1      currently means it will looks for soundslikes within two edit
1      distance apart.  This mode gets 93% of the words.
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1 slow
1      Like `normal' except that "reasonable amount of time" is not a
1      consideration.  In most cases it will return the same results as
1      `normal'.  The biggest difference is that it will try an ngram
1      scan if the normal methods of finding a suggestion fail.
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1 bad-spellers
1      This method is like `slow' but is tailored more for the bad
1      speller, where as the other modes are tailored more to strike a
1      good balance between typos and true misspellings.  This mode never
1      performs typo-analysis and returns a _huge_ number of words for
1      the really bad spellers who can't seem to get the spelling
1      anything close to what it should be.  If the misspelled word looks
1      anything like the correct spelling it is bound to be found
1      _somewhere_ on the list of 100 or more suggestions.  This mode
1      gets 98% of the words.
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1    If jump tables were not used then the `normal' option is identical
1 to `fast' and the `slow' option is identical to the `normal' if jump
1 tables were used.
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