Re: [tdf-discuss] Need for more compound words for spellcheck dictionary.

RGB ES wrote:
> AFAIK, hunspell is used for all dictionaries so the problem is not the
> engine but the dictionary itself: they need to be build around the
> idea of using compound words and that huge work (it seems) is not
> complete yet.
>
> Ricardo
>   
That makes sense, the spell checker works very well except for the fact 
that it flags far too many words that are not actually misspelled, just 
absent from the internal word list.  My experience is that the vast 
majority of these words are compound words. 
> 2011/3/2 Friedrich Strohmaier <damokles4-listen@bits-fritz.de>:
>   
> > Hi Robert, *,
> >
> > I'm not very deep involved in spellchecking, but nevertheless trying a
> > shot..
> >
> > Robert Derman schrieb:
> >
> >     
> > > RGB ES wrote:
> > >       
> > > > AFAIK, LibO dictionaries are the same dictionaries from OOo.  If you
> > > > have a custom dictionary where you added the words you miss, you can
> > > > "import" (I mean, copy to the right location) that dictionary into
> > > > LibO user profile. See here for more details about the user profile:
> > > > http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile
> > > >         
> > > > 2011/2/20 Robert Derman <robert.derman@pressenter.com> :
> > > >         
> > > > > One of the reasons, perhaps the main reason I have not upgraded to
> > > > > LO from OpenOffice 3.1 yet is that I dread having to go through the
> > > > > process of adding over a thousand compound words to the spellcheck
> > > > > dictionary.  This dictionary has almost NO compound words in it!
> > > > > Does anyone know if this problem has been addressed with LO 3.3.  I
> > > > > am using the U.S. English version.  If this severe shortcoming has
> > > > > not yet been addressed yet, I think we should do so before version
> > > > > 3.4.
> > > > >           
> > If I remember well german, dictionary changed to hunspell dictionary
> > engine for that reason. German and many more languages' words are
> > compound words in a very wide range so that problem arose from
> > beginning. Not shure what spellchecking engine is used for english
> > languages spellchecking - I guess it's aspell which has poor support for
> > compound words.
> >
> > But all guessed. Not enough insight in that topic.
> >
> > [.. impact of poor spellchecking ..]
> >     
I have a sort of technical question here.  Is there a way for non 
programmers to actually get a look at the word list that comes with LO?  
And on a related point, if so, perhaps a group of volunteers could add 
the words that are needed to that list and then send the enhanced word 
list to the developers so that it could replace the inadequate word list 
that is now used. 


I don't know if the situation is as bad in other languages as it is in 
English, I do know that German in particular is heavy with compound 
words.  If so, this might need to be done with a number of languages. 


On reason I am concerned about this is that in most areas where OOo/LO 
differ from MS Word it could be perceived that they are just different.  
One is not necessarily better or worse than the other.  But as far as 
the performance of spell checking is concerned, when compared with Word, 
Writer will be clearly perceived as inferior!  Clearly this will not 
make a good impression on the people in business who make the decisions 
as to what software their people should be using.  Clearly having a 
spell checker flag many non-misspelled words will slow down workflow and 
that is a situation that most people in business simply will not tolerate. 


So if there is not a better word list available that we can just drop 
in, then we really need to go to work and do it ourselves!


On a related subject, I have spent just a couple of hours adding things 
to the autocorrect which turned it into a fair quality grammar checker, 
just little things like change friday to Friday, january to January, 
etc.  The grammar checker in Word is pedantic and obtrusive.  I truly 
believe that with a very small amount of work, we could turn the 
autocorrect into the kind of grammar checker that many if not most 
people would be very happy with. 


One other thing, I make extensive use of the autocomplete function, but 
it has a couple of annoying traits.  How much would it take to either 
make its internal word list optionally permanent, so that you could turn 
of the gather words function without loosing the autocomplete function 
completely, or add a few rules like, don't gather strings containing 
numerals, all caps like from chapter headings, or inappropriate 
punctuation marks.  With a couple of things like this, I believe many 
more people would actually choose to use this feature, rather than ask 
how to turn it off.

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