spell check integration?

[Aidan77]

More than any other integration issue, dearth of cute aqua widgets and all, I am frequently inconvenienced by the lack of spell checker integration with OS X. (I often draft a document in text edit quickly, and then later paste it in to NeoOffice for polishing.)

I don't see anything about using OS X's native checking functions in NeoOffice 2.0, nor on the Wiki, so though I'd just inquire; is this at least on the drawing board?

(Sadly, as I type this in Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (RC), it's brand-new spell checking functionality uses its own dictionary too. Now all of the uncommon words I use have to be added THREE places. I believe Mozilla has native checking planned for 2.5, at least.)

Thanks for all the great work, NeoOffice folks.

Aidan

PS: any estimated release date for 2.0 final? I'm weary of loading my thesis in a beta application, no matter how many backups I may have...

[OPENSTEP]

Unfortunately, the current scope of the NeoOffice project is limited by resources to keeping a native version of OpenOffice.org running on Mac OS X and we do not have the resources to expand beyond this scope. There is no integration with the OS X spellchecking system and there are no solid plans for when this may even be able to start to get investigated. OOo has its own cross-platform spell checker and dictionaries and this is the system that is going to be used for the 2.0 release.

ed

[KAMiKAZOW]

Hey, if you want to use the OSX spell checker, have a look at the Camino source code (1.1-branch or trunk). Camino (just like NeoOffice and Firefox) doesn't use native text boxes, but accesses the system's spell checker.

[Samwise]

Looking at Camino's code has been suggested before; however, I believe the problem isn't to access the spell checker, but rather to have it work with the rest of the OOo code (Camino shares Gecko with the other Mozilla apps but was written for the Mac from the beginning, whereas OpenOffice.org is really designed to run under Windows, and features a lot of code which is really annoying for a Mac developer).

I think we all agree that it should be added someday, but there simply isn't enough resources and time to do it now.

[sardisson]

The other thing we've heard is from the fair portion of Camino's userbase that doesn't speak one of the 8 "Apple-blessed" languages is that they'd rather Camino not use the Mac OS X spell-checker and instead use MySpell so there are dictionaries for their languages.... You can't please everyone....

Smokey

(Of course, there are 3rd party dictionaries you can plug in to AppleSpell to access some of these "non-blessed" languages, but at the moment it seems to be an awkward and incomplete system. And while browsers have never had spell-checking before, office suites have, so until things on the native integration end are as polished and easy-to-use as the Apple-blessed languages, it would be a huge regression for a large portion of Neo's userbase to switch from Hunspell to AppleSpell....)

[jakeOSX]

spell chek? in a bowsers? what will they thnk of nxet?



-j, who did finally upgrade to camino

[LemonAid]

Well,

SeaMonkey 1.0.5 (Firefox 1.5.0.7 Code Base) HAS SpellCheck - on the Mac, not Windows.
Sure is nice to type something in these fora, then run spellcheck on it.

I'm not sure what dictonary it uses - Maybe the Mac OS X one?? Anybody have a clue??

Philip ( Glad that "someone" can finally spellcheck my typing! )

[Windshadow]

I have spent about an hour searching and I hope this is the right thread to post this in

as a brand new user of NeoOffice the thing I miss most of all is the feature in OSX that lets me doubleclick on a word and rt click to access its definition with the "look up in Dictionary" choice in the little pop up menu...

I can get allong just fine with your built in spell checker, even if I Like the Apple OSX cross carbon applicion one better, but when I am edditing other folks work the access to definitions this way in OSX is my favorite 'new' OSX feature.

I respectfully request that consideration be given to adding it at some point...

Thank you all for providing this alternative office software to the Macintosh Users of the world.

Cheers
Windy

[Lorinda]

Windy,

Welcome to the forums at trinity.

While I understand your interest in "look up in Dictionary" feature, I think I can safely say that such a feature is not likely to be developed.

The NeoOffice project is limited by resources (i.e. funding and number of developers) to keeping a native version of OpenOffice.org running on Mac OS X. There is neither the money nor the developer time to add support for Apple's services.

I say this as a Neo user, not a developer, so I may stand corrected.

Lorinda

[Windshadow]

I sort of expected that but if you never ask you never get

I have at any rate entered my wish to the never ending list I am sure they have to deal with...

Right now I am using Neo to open the weird format text files that I get like Word perfect 2 then save as RTF and edit in Text Edit from apple to have the use of the feature then back to Neo to save to what ever file format the job calls for

Thanks
Windy

[Lorinda]

It might be possible to approximate what you are wanting to do using Applescript and then assigning the applescript a key-combination using Butler, or some other app. I don't see a "Look up in Dictionary" Automator action, which would make the process easier. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Applescript to tell you how to go about doing it.

It might also be possible to do it using Quicksilver without any applescripting necessary, but I'm not familiar enough with Quicksilver to know for sure. (I tried it a while back, but in the end I decided I liked Butler better).