Adding Additional Dictionaries

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If Mac OS X does not include spelling support for your language, you have two options available for adding spellcheck support to NeoOffice. You may be able to find a third-party dictionary that plugs in to the Mac OS X spelling system (and thus will be available to all applications that use the Mac OS X spelling system), or you may be able to find OpenOffice.org dictionary extensions that support your language (perhaps providing thesaurus and hyphenation support in addition to spelling).

If Mac OS X does not have a spelling dictionary for your language, NeoOffice will use an OpenOffice.org dictionary, if installed.

Contents

Third-party dictionaries for the Mac OS X spelling system

NeoOffice will use any third-party dictionaries that plug into the native Mac OS X spelling system.

Out of the box, NeoOffice is configured to work properly with hypothetical Mac OS X spelling dictionaries for over 100 languages. To make sure that your language is among them, verify that the language appears (and is checked) in the Languages: section of the Finder's Get Info window for NeoOffice.

If the language code corresponding to the dictionary you want to use does not appear in the Get Info window, follow these steps to “add” the language to NeoOffice:

  • Quit NeoOffice, if it is running
  • Create an empty .lproj folder using the ISO code for your language in the /Applications/NeoOffice.app/Contents/Resources folder
    • Select NeoOffice in the Finder and choose Show Package Contents from the Finder's context menu.
    • Open the Contents folder and then the Resources folder
    • Create the new folder as described above
      E.g. for Icelandic, you should create a folder named is.lproj
  • Select NeoOffice in the Finder and open the Get Info window again; verify that the language now appears in the Languages: section and the box for it is checked.
  • Restart NeoOffice
  • When using NeoOffice, ensure that your documents or sections thereof are set to the correct language

Known Sources of Third-Party Mac OS X Spelling System Dictionaries

Known third-party dictionaries include those for:

You should install these dictionaries according to their instructions and then verify that NeoOffice is configured to claim support for the language, as described above.

* Note that some users have reported cocoAspell has caused NeoOffice to be unable to use the Mac OS X spell-checker; see below for more information.

Installing Third-Party Dictionaries for OpenOffice.org

Due to licensing problems and other issues, the OpenOffice.org code behind NeoOffice does not include dictionaries for more than a few languages.

Beginning in NeoOffice 3.0, dictionaries are available as OpenOffice.org extensions, and many can be found via the the OpenOffice.org Extensions Repository. To install a dictionary packaged as an OpenOffice.org extension:

  1. Download the desired dictionary extension from the Extensions Repository.
  2. Double-click the .oxt file and follow the prompts to install the dictionary.
  3. There is no step 3.

If you want to install a dictionary for all users on your Mac, follow the steps on Installing an extension for all users instead of using the steps above.

For information on installing OpenOffice.org dictionaries in NeoOffice 2.x, see this article.

Because the OpenOffice.org writing tools authors and their communities are always updating these tools, you should periodically check your dictionary extensions for updates (choose Extension Manager from the Tools menu, and then click Check for updates...).

Known Sources of Third-Party OpenOffice.org Dictionaries

Most dictionaries are now found on the OpenOffice.org Extensions Repository. However, some dictionaries are still available from other sources, particularly commercial tools like Antidote.

  • Linguistico: Italian (better quality than those available from the Dictionary Wizard) unsure if this is available in a format compatible with 3.0
  • Antidote Very complete French set of writing tools. Antidote installs easily in NeoOffice 2 (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw) and claims to be compatible with OpenOffice.org 3.0 as well. Antidote is shareware (about $69).

If you find a dictionary for your language in either Hunspell (preferred) or MySpell format, it is possible to use this dictionary with NeoOffice if you follow these instructions to generate an extension from the dictionary files.

Disabling Writing Tools for Unnecessary Languages

  1. Under the NeoOffice menu choose Preferences.
  2. In the dialog that appears, double-click on Language Settings
  3. Click on Writing Aids
  4. In the panel that appears, highlight (but don't uncheck) NeoOffice Mac OS X Spellcheck with Hunspell and click the Edit button to the right of the this item.
  5. In the dialog that appears, select a language from the pop-up list and uncheck NeoOffice Mac OS X Spellcheck with Hunspell.
  6. Repeat this step for all languages that you want to disable and click Close when you are finished.
  7. To save your changes, click OK and the dialog will close.
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