Monday, June 25, 2007

GAIM (a.k.a. Pidgin) with spell-check

(July 27, 2010):  These instructions apply to Pidgin versions 2.6.6 and older.  Instructions for Pidgin 2.7 and newer can be found here.

After running GAIM (a.k.a. Pidgin) for over a year, I decided I needed to get the spell checker working. Remarkably, there is very little documentation on how to do this. Even worse, search results from google, live and ask aren't very helpful either. Maybe getting spell-check setup is painfully obvious to others, but it wasn't to me!
  • Download GAIMPortable (PidginPortable) from portableapps.com
  • Download the ASpell win32 installer from aspell.net
  • Download the appropriate precompiled dictionary from aspell.net
  • Install GaimPortable (PidginPortable)
  • Install ASpell. (It will default to c:\program files\aspell)
  • Install the precompiled ASpell dictionary.
  • Copy c:\program files\aspell to App\aspell
  • Start GAIM and keep your fingers crossed!