Dicionaries with OpenOffice and NeoOffice

[SoLong]

I run OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 on my PC and NeoOffice 2.2.5 Patch 7 on my G4 Mac. I can swap data quite happily but when I copied a large (6500 lines) spreadsheet file from OpenOffice.org to NeoOffice it didn't bring the list of spellings to ignore with it. I put all the spellings to ignore into the IgnoreAllList dictionary in OpenOffice.org but that wasn't copied across to NeoOffice when I copied the spreadsheet.
2 Questions:
1. Where do I find the dictionary IgnoreAllList in OpenOfficeOrg 3.0 on the PC?
2. Can I copy it to some location on the Mac so that NeoOffice can pick it up and use it?
Steve

[narf]

I have some bad news, the words in IgnoreAllList are not saved in a file that can be copied. The words in IgnoreAllList are not saved from one session to the next in either NeoOffice or OpenOffice.org. If you quit and restart OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 on your PC you will still see the words as spelled incorrectly again.

However, if the words were added to the standard dictionary using the Add button in the Spelling and Grammar dialog window, they are placed in a file called standard.dic and that file can be copied from OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 to NeoOffice 2.2.5.

I do not have a Microsoft Windows machine to check where standard.dic is located using OpenOffice.org 3.0.0, but I believe the file is located here (or somewhere similar):

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\OpenOffice.org\3\user\wordbook\

In NeoOffice the standard.dic file is located in this directory:

~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.2/user/wordbook
Note: ~ represents your home folder.

Try these steps to copy the standard.dic file from OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 on your PC to NeoOffice 2.2.5 on your Mac:

1. Quit NeoOffice.

2. Make a copy of the NeoOffice standard.dic if one exists

3. Place a copy of the standard.dic file from the PC in the folder:
~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.2/user/wordbook

4. Restart NeoOffice

Were the words ever added to the Standard dictionary? If so, do the steps I listed work for you?

--fran

[SoLong]

Ah! thank you Fran, that explains a lot! I had wondered if I was doing something amiss; I was! Putting the words into the IgnoreAllList seems to be a bit nugatory, particularly if you will be working on that same document a few days hence, I'll redo the whole thing using Standard.dic and go a'hunting for that.
I wonder if giving each document its own IgnoreAllList which is retained for the life of the document rather than just the session may be an idea for future development - way beyond me, I'm afraid, but perhaps the techie guys could add it to the list of nice-to-haves?
Steve

[narf]

One other thing to consider is setting up a custom dictionary. I do not know if it will meet your needs, but a user-defined behaves like the standard.dic. You can set one up by selecting NeoOffice's Tools :: Options menu. In the dialog that opens click the disclosure triangle next to Language settings to expand that section. Select Writing Aids and in the middle section, User-defined dictionaries, there is a New button that can be used to create a custom dictionary. That dictionary file is stored in the same directory as standard.dic and can be copied from one wordbook directory to another.

A non-persistent IgnoreAllList is the default behavior in Neooffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code and OpenOffice.org does not provide any way to change the default.

Unfortunately, our very limited funding and developer resources limits the current scope of the NeoOffice project to keeping a native version of OpenOffice.org running on Mac OS X and significant changes to OpenOffice.org features is outside that scope.

You can file a feature request in the OpenOffice.org issue tracker to get it on the radar of the core OpenOffice.org developers and if they add this feature, the new behavior will get included in a future release of NeoOffice:

http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html

Note : our advice is to not mention NeoOffice as mentioning NeoOffice may cause OOo volunteers to accidentally close it without actually reviewing your bug.

--fran

[SoLong]

Food for thought there; I'll investigate the custom dictionary aspect before doing anything else and see if that will fit the bill for me. I certainly don't want anything to happen to Neooffice, I use it far too much! Many thanks for your replies.
Steve