Spell-check engine?

[Michele Simionato]

I take the occasion for a simple question about ispell/aspell.

If I write

$ echo "hello worldd" | ispell -a

I obtain

@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell .33.7
alpha)
*
& worldd 17 6: world, worlds, wold, whorled, would, wooled, wield,
world's, weld, wild, whirled, wolds, worded, Wilda, Wilde, wiled, word

Now clearly the & means "this is the mispelled word" and the second
number
(6 in this case) is the position of the mispelled word (the column
number).
But what is the meaning of the first number, 17 in this case ?
It is not the row number; maybe it is a code specifying the kind of
mispelling error ? Moreover: is it possible extract from ispell/aspell
the row number of the mispelled word ?

A nice Python front-end to ispell would certainly be interesting. The
first
application I see is a Tkinter text widget with automatic spelling
checking.