Dictionary File Structure of Open Spell-Checkers

Question

Is there any explanation docs or tutorials of the file structure of FreeDict, Aspell, Hunspell/OpenOffice Dictionaries especially concerning the switches at the end of each row in each .dic file? My guess is that the switches describe the semantic interpretation of the word whether it's a

• noun
• adjective
• adverb
• adverbial
• etc.

or any combination of the above. But I don't know how to match these to the switch characters.

I'm also curios about what the .aff file describes.

Maddening

Answer 1

This looks like a good starting point, and the downloads at this page may have the format documentation you're looking for.

Ensign

Answer 2

Just a couple of links that might help you:

this is on sthackoverflow : What's the format of the OpenOffice dictionaries?

this second one is a good start

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedict/index.php?title=Main_Page

hope this helps

Pouf

Answer 3

In Hunspell the tags you choose are arbitrary, they have no meaning other than that which you assign to them. You can choose from using letters, numbers (1-65535) and more.

The affix file describes many things, but is mainly concerned with how words are inflected.

For example:

$ test.dic
4
apple/a
banana/a
green/b
small/b

$ test.aff
SFX a Y 2 # Allow the following 2 suffixes to words with the "a" flag.
SFX a 0 s . # An "s" at the end for words ending in any letter (signified by the dot). "Apples" and "bananas". 
SFX a 0 s' . # "Apples'" and "bananas'".

SFX b Y 2
SFX b 0 er . # "Greener" and "smaller".
SFX b 0 est . # "Greenest" and "smallest".

The manual explains most of the things in detail. There are also test files one can look at.

Aurify