Open Office and spellchecking

kikinovak · 03-13-2014, 02:41 PM

Hi,

I've been using Open Office for quite some time on Slackware 13.37, then 14.0, then 14.1. I'm using my own packages, built from the official binary tarballs.

One of my clients complained today that spellchecking doesn't seem to work. Language packages are installed though, and the interface shows up in French as it should. In the Options dialogue in Open Office, spellchecking is activated... only there's nothing.

I didn't notice this until now, because I never use a spellchecker. Any idea how this can be solved?

Cheers,

Niki

cwizardone · 03-13-2014, 02:54 PM

This sounds similar,

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...c2-4175482398/

jimX86 · 03-13-2014, 10:40 PM

If you go to Options/Language Settings/Languages and then choose "Default languages for documents", the languages with a blue check mark have dictionaries installed. If French isn't listed with a blue check mark, then I think you could just install the French dictionary extension in addition to the language pack. http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/...h-dictionaries

kikinovak · 03-14-2014, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimX86

If you go to Options/Language Settings/Languages and then choose "Default languages for documents", the languages with a blue check mark have dictionaries installed. If French isn't listed with a blue check mark, then I think you could just install the French dictionary extension in addition to the language pack. http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/...h-dictionaries

Well, here's the mystery. Everything seems OK in Options/Language Settings/Languages. French appears correctly everywhere. Only spellchecking doesn't work. I can write a document with some nonsense words, nothing gets underlined.

s09 · 03-14-2014, 02:49 AM

Have yo tried to select the text and to change the language for the selection to "French" via the "Tools" menu?

jimX86 · 03-14-2014, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikinovak

French appears correctly everywhere. Only spellchecking doesn't work.

I don't know about French, but I don't think that all language packs include a dictionary. You can tell by looking for the blue checkmarks in the drop-down list of Default Languages. Did you try installing the French dictionary extension?

kikinovak · 03-15-2014, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimX86

I don't know about French, but I don't think that all language packs include a dictionary. You can tell by looking for the blue checkmarks in the drop-down list of Default Languages. Did you try installing the French dictionary extension?

Yes, everything is installed correctly. One thing leading to another, I gave LibreOffice another spin (the stable 4.1.5 version). I hadn't tried it since one of their early versions. I installed it on my main workstation. Besides the fact that visual integration in my Xfce desktop is better, spell-checking is working without any troubles, and the rest also seems crisp and clean. I'll test it more in the days and weeks to come, and maybe I'll adopt it definitely and move the openoffice-* packages to pasture/.

tronayne · 03-15-2014, 08:52 AM

Have you got the French Dictionaries installed (see http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/...h-dictionaries? The file name is lo-oo-ressources-linguistiques-fr-v5.0.2.oxt and the instructions are:

Quote:

[fr]

Dictionnaire orthographique.
Dictionnaire des synonymes.
Règles des coupures de mots.

Vous pouvez participer au développement des dictionnaires sur Dicollecte.

En 1990, le Conseil supérieur à la langue française et l’Académie française ont proposé une réforme de l’orthographe qui concerne plusieurs milliers de mots. L’emploi des nouvelles graphies n’est pas obligatoire. Les anciennes comme les nouvelles sont considérées comme correctes. Sur la réforme de l’orthographe de 1990, lire Renouvo. La nouvelle orthographe suscite beaucoup de polémiques. Afin de satisfaire les exigences de chacun, quatre dictionnaires existent, respectant différemment cette réforme.

Vous pouvez sélectionner le dictionnaire de votre choix dans le menu Outils > Langue > Dictionnaires orthographiques français.

Le correcteur grammatical est disponible dans une extension annexe : Grammalecte

I have those installed in OpenOffice (your installer) and it works just fine when I select French in a document (my default it US English but I use the French, Spanish, Italian, German and Latin dictionaries).

Hope this helps some.

jimX86 · 03-15-2014, 10:37 AM

That's the same link that I provided above. It works for me as well.