Any way to use the system spell checker?

[Finnish User]

Hi,

I use NeoOffice/J regularly. It is a great piece of software. However, since the language I write in (Finnish) isn't properly supported by OpenOffice.org, it lacks a spell checker. OTOH, there's a good free (as in beer) Finnish spell checker for MacOSX, namely [url=http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/oarasane/soikko/]
Soikko[/url]. It plugs into the system's spell check service, thus allowing Cocoa based applications to check my Finnish for spelling errors. Unfortunately, neither Ooffice.org nor NeoOffice/J are Cocoa applications. Therefore, they know nothing about the existence of Soikko. Or do they? I started thinking that, since NeoOffice/J is partially Mac-ified, maybe there is a way to use the system's spell check service after all? Please tell me that there is.

[OPENSTEP]

While it is possible to call Cocoa code from Carbon and the like, I don't think anyone has any plans to do any type of integration of the system spelling service for either NeoJ or OOo X11. This is the first I've heard it mentioned.

You may want to try organizing some type of project to lobby for it or see if there's enough users to raise up a bounty if you can't find anyone to implement it.

ed

[VPH]

[OPENSTEP]

It's more not a need of names to list...it's more that there's only two folks doing Neo specifically (Patrick and myself). I don't mean to sound like the leader of our country right now...but the OOo spellchecker has worked well for English and has done so ever since Kevin Hendricks re-engineered it for open source back in 2000.

Your best bet is to see if you can find a strong localization consortium of users to fund the work and/or programmers who have the motivation to undertake the work. It'll probably be difficult to muster support for it here or within the OOo community at large without a vocal backing. I apologize if that sounds harsh, but it unfortunately is the reality with which you're probably faced either here or within OOo itsel

ed

[JustPassingBy]

Hmmm, have to admit that I don't know all the ins and outs of this issue but isn't the question really about implementing support for native OSX spell checking or not? (and if it can be done)

If you did implement support for the native system all the updates with regard to spell checking you'd ever have to do was to change when the api changes (but unless Apple does something really stupid later versions of the api should be compatible with previous ones).

Since OOo spell checking for Swedish also isn't the best... and I'm guessing this is a common problem for the smaller languages (heck it's a problem for English as well, there is a project request for a revamp), using the system implementation would solve the problem once and for all... by handing the responsibility over to someone else...

But this is just my 1 cent...

/Erik

[Guest]

The guys over at Mozilla (Camino actually), are trying to use the native spellchecker in Gecko text boxes, maybe the code could be shared? (or maybe not Camino is Cocoa )