From: Kevin B. Hendricks <kevin.hendricks@sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: [users] question (spellcheck still not working)
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 09:28:26 -0500
Hi,
I'm the author of the spellchecking system with which some seem to be having trouble.
I really want to nail down what is going wrong.
> Apart from that, the spellchecker dialog presents every word
> of 2 or more characters as an "Unknown word". After clicking the
> "confirm (ABC tick)" button, the "Language" list box changes from
> "English (AU)" to "English (USA)", I then click on the "Add" button and
> the checker moves to the next "Unknown word".
> It is as if the checker is learning the language. I am not sure where
> the checked words are being saved - soffice [All] perhaps. When I rerun
> the checker, it skips the words it has already checked.
No, this is wrong -- you are mixing two different types of dictionaries.
Spellchecking *does* work and you do *not* need to add every word to a user specified dictionary. If you do,
you will simply interfere with the proper operation of other dictionaries and create bloat.
Assuming we are talking about a Linux system (we can modify these steps for Windows). Please do the following
to test the spell checking system from scratch: We will delete any old or partially installed dictionariesand re-install
them from known, good copies and go from there)
1. Start with OOo1.0.1 or OOo643C (english only), spellchecking in OOo1.0.0 has too many bugs.
Please upgrade, if at all possible.
2. Exit out of OpenOffice and Quickstarter (make sure neither is running).
3. Next, let's remove any old dictionary files of any sort. (you may have to be root to perform this step):
cd PLACE_YOU_INSTALLED_OPENOFFICE/share/dict/ooo
rm *.dic
rm *.aff
rm dictionary.lst
[as user]
cd YOUR_USER_SPECIFIC_LOCATION/user/wordbook/
rm *.dic
rm *.aff
rm dictionary.lst
4. Using en_GB as an example, ... go to http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/download_dictionary.html
and download to your computer:
en_GB.zip
hyph_en.zip
en_US.zip
5. cd PLACE_YOU_INSTALLED_OPENOFFICE/share/dict/ooo
unzip PATH_TO/en_GB.zip
unzip PATH_TO/en_US.zip
unzip PATH_TO/hyph_en.zip
(this will create en_GB.dic and en_GB.aff in share/dict/ooo/ and
replace the en_US.aff, en_US.dic, and hyph_en.dic that came with OOo
originallywhich you deleted in step 3 above)
6. create a completely new dictionary.lst file at this location just in case the old one is messed up somehow:
echo "DICT en GB en_GB" > dictionary.lst
echo "HYPH en GB hyph_en" >> dictionary.lst
echo "THES en GB th_en_US" >> dictionary.lst
echo "DICT en US en_US" >> dictionary.lst
echo "HYPH en US hyph_en" >> dictionary.lst
echo "THES en US th_en_US" >> dictionary.lst
[Note: you can do this with a text editor, if preferred.]
7. If you did all of this, then share/dict/ooo/ should look like the following:
dictionary.lst
en_GB.aff
en_GB.dic
en_US.dic
en_US.aff
hyph_en.dic
th_en_US.dat
th_en_US.idx
and dictionary.lst should look like this:
DICT en GB en_GB
HYPH en GB hyph_en
THES en GB th_en_US
DICT en US en_US
HYPH en US hyph_en
THES en US th_en_US
8. After double-checking that steps 1 to 7 have been done, then start up OOo (and quickstarter if you use it).
9. Go immediately to: Tools->Options->LanguageSettings->WritingAids
Hit "Edit" and use the *pull down* menu to select your locale
DO NOT FORGET TO HIT THE EDIT BUTTON AND USE THE LOCALE PULLDOWN and then,
make sure to check the box beside the MySpell Spell Checker for that locale, as well as hyphenator and theasurus,
if so desired.Then, once those are checked you should see checkboxes with ABC beside both en(US) and en(UK).
10. Now, to test if this has worked, do NOT open any previous document but simply go to an empty Writer doc (should be on screen already )
and type the following lines:
This is a line of text in American, and
this is a line of text in British.
Then highlight both lines and use the Font pull-down menu and select a font you know absolutely certain is installed on your machine (i.e.,
do NOT select Thorndale!). I chose Courier on my machine for this test.
11. Highlight the first line of the file and go to Format->Character->Font
and using the language pulldown menu select "en (US)" (you should see a
little check with ABC by it).
12. Highlight the second line of the file and go to Format->Character->Font and use the pulldown menu and select "en (UK)" (it should
also have a little check ABC beside it).
13. Then, once all of this is done, please put your cursor at the very beginning of this document and using Tools, tell it to spellcheck the
document.
You should immediately see a spelling error with "linee" in a window with "line" as one of the suggestions (this is the spellling error in
the American line) and then once you replace that you should in fact see the exact same window (this time for the British spelling error)
which you can then replace.
You should have now spellchecked a document successfully in two different languages in one pass. I have tested all of these procedures on my
machine and it works 100% of the time for me.
If you have followed these instructions exactly and don't see what I see, then we have a bug I need to track down. Please contact me directly
with exactly what happened at each step and we can figure out why spellchecking is not working for you.
Kevin
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