Seamonkey spell checker default bad, adding dictionaries broken

[Bryce Nesbitt]

Binary package hint: seamonkey

1) By default I found SeaMonkey has no spelling checking (while "[X] check spelling as you type' is enabled in mail, all words are OK no matter how badely speled).

2) Entering "Options->Check Spelling" reveals an empty language box. Installing the English language pack gives error -212 (as a user).

3) Installing the English Language pack as root, results in new behavior: every possible word is marked as mispelled, both in mail and in web forms. This form has every word underlined, for example, as I am typing.

Seamonkey: SeaMonkey 1.1.9
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080313 SeaMonkey/1.1.9 (Ubuntu-1.1.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu1)

Ubuntu :Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu 8.04 - the Hardy Heron - released in April 2008.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jul 31 13:31:47 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: seamonkey 1.1.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: seamonkey
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-server i686

[omendez (o-a-mendez-morales)]

I Also have the same problem. I'm using Kubuntu.
Orlando.

[Fabien Tassin (fta)]

This is working fine for me with 1.1.12 on intrepid & hardy.

What do you have in /usr/lib/seamonkey/dictionaries ?
This should be a link to /usr/share/myspell/dicts and then, it should contain (at least) all the myspell dicts installed on your system.

$ dpkg -l | grep myspell
ii myspell-en-gb 1:2.4.0~m240-1ubuntu1 English_british dictionary for myspell
ii myspell-en-us 1:2.4.0~m240-1ubuntu1 English_american dictionary for myspell
ii myspell-en-za 1:2.4.0~m240-1ubuntu1 English_shouthafrican dictionary for myspell
ii myspell-fr-gut 1:1.0-23ubuntu1 The French dictionary for myspell (GUTenberg version)

[stlubuntu (jlrbennett)]

I have the same problem on 32-bit hardy running 1.1.19 on ubuntulite
(LXDE on CLI hardy install) except I get Unexpected error -211 when attempting
to install the US-English messenger spelling dictionary. Tried repeating
the procedure after launching form a terminal with sudo seamonkey
with the same results.

[stlubuntu (jlrbennett)]

Just upgraded to 1.1.12 via update manager and the problem persists.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

could you please provide the info Fabien has asked for?

[clau (claudia-geolatina)]

Yes. Installing the Spanish language pack gives error -212 (as a user).
Distro Release: Ubuntu 8.10
SeaMonkey 1.1.12

[stlubuntu (jlrbennett)]

The command:

dpkg -l | grep myspell

successfully completes, but no output.

In response to the info Fabien asked for:

>What do you have in /usr/lib/seamonkey/dictionaries ?
>This should be a link to /usr/share/myspell/dicts and then, it should contain (at least) all the myspell >dicts installed on your system.

The link does exist in /usr/lib/seamonkey/dictionaries
but it appears that the /myspell/dicts subfolders do not even exist under
/usr/share

The output you show in your above post appear to have version numbers of 2.4.0 which
tells me that you might have OpenOffice 2.4.0 installed on that machine and that is
where those dictionaries come from. OpenOffice was never installed at all on this pc
(as it is an old Pentium II-333.) In fact the ubuntu-desktop / gnome packages were
never even installed. Abiword was installed and works fine. I would prefer not to
install OpenOffice as a workaround (limited hard drive space remaining.)

Thanks for your help and assistance on this. Puppy uses seamonkey -- I wonder
if this bug could be duplicated on puppy (without OpenOffice.)

Best Regards.

[Bryce Nesbitt (bryce2)]

I solved the problem for myself by running the program as root, installing the dictionary as root, then visiting the appropriate dictionary files and using "chmod" "+r" to make them readable to non-root users.

[stlubuntu (jlrbennett)]

I have identified a workaround that has been successful
for me as follows:

Open a terminal and enter

sudo apt-get install aspell aspell-en myspell-en-us

enter your password and it is fixed.

Please note that this is merely a workaround. The bug still remains.
As a bug fix, at the next update I recommend making the above
packages required dependencies.

Someone who has a standard GNOME (or maybe even KDE) ubuntu
installation (with OpenOffice) may have already had these packages
installed, but mine is an u-lite (FKA ubuntulite / LXDE / Openbox) on top
of a basic CLI ubuntu hardy install and these packages were not installed
causing my seamonkey spellchecker not to function (and would further
not allow me to install a spellcheck dictionary.)

Thanks.