LyX spellcheck in Ubuntu Natty

Among other annoying things in the new Ubuntu Natty release, it seems that spellchecking may become disabled in LyX. The fix is rather simple, but annoying to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The secret is that LyX relies on external libraries to provide its spellcheck capability, so if they’re not installed correctly or not configured correctly in LyX then it breaks. And it doesn’t tell you why.

The solution after a Natty upgrade (I haven’t checked on a clean install) is:

• Open up LyX
• Go to Tools > Preferences > Language Settings > Spellchecker
• Chances are good that the “Spellchecker executable” option is not set to anything. Change it to your preferred library, which by default should be Enchant.
• While you’re there, turn on the new “Spellcheck continuously” option. This is the new inline spellchecker.

Job done. Now you can continue using a function that was already working with exactly the same library before the upgrade happened.