Spellcheck in Openoffice 3.0 (Jaunty alpha) flags all words as mis-spellings

[dnyaga]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org

I am running Jaunty alpha, fully updated as at the time of this reporting. Openoffice.org writer underlines all words in red - as though they were wrongly spelled. I have attached a screenshot:

I will be glad to supply any additional information that is needed.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Do you have the dictionary for your language installed and the document set to that language?

You can verify by going to "Tools->Options->Language Settings->Languages" if the language it shows eg "English (USA)" is not the language you are writing in you need to change it to what you are writing in. If it is correct you also need to verify that you see a icon to the left of it that shows a checkmark ABC which indicates you have a spellchecker installed for that language. If you do not then it can not correct the spelling for your document.

Chris

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

I see the same behaviour as the OP - although only with non-English (in my case: German) documents, see the screenshot. Language settings are correct, the spell checker makes German suggestions - but strangely complicated ones for very simple words...

When started from commandline I get the following error when I right-click on a word to get suggestions:
error - missing word count in dictionary file
Hash Manager Error : 4

I am using:
openoffice.org-writer/jaunty uptodate 1:3.0.1-1ubuntu4
hunspell-de-de/jaunty uptodate 20071211-1ubuntu1

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

Oh, and here the german .odt file, maybe helpful for testing... (the text is copied from ubuntuusers.de - but I think that's ok, and reasonably free of spelling mistakes ;-) )

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

On my en_us system I installed hunspell-de-de and then had no problem it only showed the following three spelling errors "Forumsbenutzer", "Linuxwelt", and "schiefgehen".

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Does moving/removing ~/.openoffice.org* help any?

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

moving .openoffice.org and .openoffice.org2 didn't help. Any suggestions how
to find the relevant differences between your and my system?

[dnyaga (daniel-nyaga)]

Same for me. Deleting .openoffice* did not help. I have verified that my language is English USA. The spellcheck icon shows.

Some additional background may help here: my system is not a clean Jaunty install. It is a progressively upgraded system (I was running Intrepid a month ago). I have generally never fooled around with dictionaries and locales: I let the package management tools do their job. In Intrepid, Openoffice.org 2.4 worked just fine.

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

Just to add: In my case it is also an upgraded system not a new install.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

You may want to make sure all the openoffice.org packages are installed. The easiest way to get most of them (the needed ones anyway) is to install the 'openoffice.org' package which is a package that just depends on all the needed packages. This might resolve the problem though I am not sure why it wouldn't work properly without the other packages.

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

I just installed openoffice.org - the situation is still the same.

[dnyaga (daniel-nyaga)]

Partly resolved:

I went mucking through the installed packages and found out this:
  hunspell-en-us, language-support-en and language-support-writing-en are INSTALLED
  myspell-en-gb and myspell-en-za are INSTALLED
  myspell-en-us is NOT INSTALLED
  hunspell dictionaries for en_GB and en_ZA are NOT INSTALLED
When I mark myspell-en-us for installation, the package tools mark hunspell-en-us, language-support-en and language-support-writing-en for uninstallation.

My locale lang is en_US.UTF-8. When I fired up the GNOME language support tool, it informed me that language-pack-kde-en, language-pack-kde-en-base, language-pack-kde-en are NOT installed (and offered the option to install, which I took). Language-pack-gnome-en was already installed. The desktop language support issue is a side issue which I am mentioning for completeness' sake. I use both KDE4 and GNOME.

When I switch my openoffice document language to en_GB (UK English), things work like a beauty. What I do not understand is:
- what is the difference between the hunspell and myspell dictionaries? Can Openoffice spellcheck using both?
- which is "THE" appropriate en_US dictionary package?

Marcel, I suspect that the solution to your issue shall be similar. Right now, I will install myspell-en-us and report back on the results.

Best Regards,
Daniel Nyaga

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

Ok - I solved the problem for me:
In addition to hunspell-de-de I had also the package hunspell-de-med (medical German dictionary) installed. And for some reason *only* the specialized dictionary was consulted... After deinstalling the dictionary, everything is back to normal. I'm not sure whether the problem is openoffice's or hunspell-de-med's fault

In /usr/share/myspell/infos/ooo the file hunspell-de-med contained the line
DICT de DE de_med
maybe that's not the correct way of registering a dictionary...?

Anyway, this package can't be the reason for the OP because he is using US English. @dnyaga, could you maybe run
grep "en US" /usr/share/myspell/infos/ooo/*
in a terminal, to see whether you have a simliar issue?

[dnyaga (daniel-nyaga)]

Some output from aptitude that may (or may not) be enlightening:

dnyaga@ngure:~$ sudo aptitude install myspell-en-us
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
  hunspell-en-us
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  myspell-en-us
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 256kB of archives. After unpacking 774kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  hunspell-en-us: Conflicts: myspell-en-us but 1:3.0.1-3ubuntu1 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
hunspell-en-us
language-support-en
language-support-writing-en

Score is 257

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

[dnyaga (daniel-nyaga)]

Sorry if I appear to be spamming your inboxes, but I am posting my findings as I try stuff out. REINSTALLING hunspell-en-us also solves the problem ie my docs can now be US English and the spellchecker works as advertised. I cannot offer an explanation for this - it just worked on my installation.

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

Hi Daniel,
sorry, was writing my own comment before reading yours... hunspell is a 'better version' of myspell - but openoffice can work with both (but you can just have either hunspell or myspell, thats why the package-manager deinstalled hunspell-en-us on installing myspell-en-us).
Although the problem seems to be fixed for both of us, could you still run the command I mentioned above?

FWIW: Reinstallung hunspell-de-de didn't help in my case, it fails to work whenever I have both hunspell-de-de and hunspell-de-med installed.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Marcel,

Your problem sounds like bug 329968. I couldn't reproduce the problem here though using the extension mentioned in the other bug report.

Chris

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Marking invalid as reinstalling the hunspell-en-us appears to have fixed the original problem of this bug report.

If the bug 329968 is not the same issue you are seeing with respect to hunspell-de-med then please open a new bug. Also if it is the same bug please follow up with the information you posted to this bug report in that bug report.

Thanks!

Chris Cheney

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

For me the removing of hunspell-de-med (medical german dictionary) as suggested by Marcel solved the problem.