RE: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Kevin Wilson

8 Jan 2003 8 Jan '03

23:07

WOW! This really makes me want to run out and pay $400 for MSOffice and throw away my OpenOffice for good. Just giving ya the business ... :-) -----Original Message----- From: Alexandr Malusek [mailto:Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 4:36 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!! Marino Fernandez writes:

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I actually don't think so. I just downloaded and installed open office in windows and is the same thing... unless i forgot to load the same "module" on windows. I actually made some test, and MS word did a much better job:

professional OO MS Word proffessional professional professional proffesional N/A professional porffesional N/A professional poffesional N/A professional poffesiomal N/A professional poffesioanal N/A professional offesioanal N/A N/A

If OO uses ispell (I haven't checked it) then this is the default behavior of ispell: <info ispell> If there are "near misses" in the dictionary (words which differ by only a single letter, a missing or extra letter, a pair of transposed letters, or a missing space or hyphen), then they are also displayed on following lines. As well as "near misses", ispell may display other guesses at ways to make the word from a known root, with each guess preceded by question marks. All words for which OO didn't provide an alternative differed by at least 2 letters.

...

PS as somebody may well point out, thats because MS word is for people with brain damage... but that is a lame excuse.

I think you are right that ispell should be improved. -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

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rex

8 Jan 8 Jan

23:42

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Kevin Wilson [2003-01-08 15:16]:

...

Marino Fernandez writes:

...
I actually don't think so. I just downloaded and installed open office in windows and is the same thing... unless i forgot to load the same "module" on windows. I actually made some test, and MS word did a much better job:

professional OO MS Word aspell proffessional professional professional professional proffesional N/A professional professional porffesional N/A professional professional poffesional N/A professional professional poffesiomal N/A professional professional poffesioanal N/A professional professional offesioanal N/A N/A No correct option

IMO, ispell sucks compared to aspell. I call it from mutt: newsbody -hqs -n $2 -p aspell check -- -x %f Newsbody is a nice filter that separates the quoted parts of a message (so only the stuff you've written gets spell-checked) and puts it back after the spell check is done. http://aspell.sourceforge.net/ http://home.worldonline.dk/byrial/spellutils/ http://www.mutt.org HTH, -rex -- "AI is bullshit." - Feng-hsiung Hsu, father of the Deep Blue project

Alexandr Malusek

9 Jan 9 Jan

10:24

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

rex writes:

...

...
...
professional OO MS Word aspell proffessional professional professional professional proffesional N/A professional professional porffesional N/A professional professional poffesional N/A professional professional poffesiomal N/A professional professional poffesioanal N/A professional professional offesioanal N/A N/A No correct option

IMO, ispell sucks compared to aspell.

I've checked the aspell spell helper (http://aspell.net/suggest/) suggests the correct spelling for all of the words above. Even for "offesioanal". There is an external aspell module for OO (http://external.openoffice.org/) but I haven't tested it. aspell is on SuSE 8.1 CDs but I have some troubles to get it working: $ aspell -c file.txt Aborted I don't have time to investigate it. -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se

rex

21:48

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Alexandr Malusek [2003-01-09 09:16]:

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I've checked the aspell spell helper (http://aspell.net/suggest/) suggests the correct spelling for all of the words above. Even for "offesioanal".

My version is quite old.

...

aspell is on SuSE 8.1 CDs but I have some troubles to get it working:

$ aspell -c file.txt Aborted

I don't have time to investigate it.

I hesitate to ask, but did you install a dictionary after installing aspell? Regards, -rex

Alexandr Malusek

22:51

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

rex writes:

...

...
aspell is on SuSE 8.1 CDs but I have some troubles to get it working:

$ aspell -c file.txt Aborted

I don't have time to investigate it.

I hesitate to ask, but did you install a dictionary after installing aspell?

I don't know but YaST installed: $ rpm -qa|grep aspell aspell-se-0.2-350 aspell-en-0.33.7.1-207 aspell-0.33.7.1-207 I suppose the first two are dictionaries. Can anybody confirm aspell works or doesn't work in SuSE 8.1? -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se

Ben Rosenberg

23:55

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

* Alexandr Malusek (Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se) [030109 14:52]: ->rex writes: -> ->> > aspell is on SuSE 8.1 CDs but I have some troubles to get it working: ->> > ->> > $ aspell -c file.txt ->> > Aborted ->> > ->> > I don't have time to investigate it. ->> ->> I hesitate to ask, but did you install a dictionary after installing aspell? -> ->I don't know but YaST installed: -> ->$ rpm -qa|grep aspell ->aspell-se-0.2-350 ->aspell-en-0.33.7.1-207 ->aspell-0.33.7.1-207 It works fine for me. I did 'aspell -c test.txt' and it worked fine for the whole file I made to test it. And this is what rpm -qa returned when I went looking for what I had installed. 3:38PM ben@frell:~/ > rpm -qa|grep aspell aspell-en-0.33.7.1-222 aspell-0.33.7.1-222 aspell-devel-0.33.7.1-222 latah, -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.

Carlos E. R.

19 Jan 19 Jan

02:16

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

The 03.01.08 at 15:42, rex wrote:

...

IMO, ispell sucks compared to aspell. I call it from mutt: newsbody -hqs -n $2 -p aspell check -- -x %f

Unfortunately - for me - it does not have a Spanish dictionary, so it is almost useless - for me again. At least, it is not included with suse 8.1. By the way, the Suse OO do not have Spanish dictionaries, I only found mention of the German dictionaries on the CDs. Mmm... I spell-checked the above (with ispell, I think), and it tries to correct text preceded with ">". Can "aspell" be told to ignore those lines? -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Charles Philip Chan

09:20

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On January 18, 2003 09:16 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Unfortunately - for me - it does not have a Spanish dictionary,

International dictionaries (including a Spanish one) for OO are located here: http://whiteboard.openoffice.org/lingucomponent/download_dictionary.html?JSe...

...

Mmm... I spell-checked the above (with ispell, I think), and it tries to correct text preceded with ">". Can "aspell" be told to ignore those lines?

Both Ispell and Aspell can do this. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Km3G3epPyyKbwPYRAvK6AJ0aA0wkwVGwHrmG6Pfm3zJTS3DImwCgvGmb K+rUTiKMtAuMQ7EKI0WHxEY= =TrKe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Carlos E. R.

20 Jan 20 Jan

01:39

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

The 03.01.19 at 04:20, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

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International dictionaries (including a Spanish one) for OO are located here:

Thanks, I'll check.

...

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Mmm... I spell-checked the above (with ispell, I think), and it tries to correct text preceded with ">". Can "aspell" be told to ignore those lines?

Both Ispell and Aspell can do this.

Could you elaborate? I have not found any option for that in the ispell man page, it only mentions html, troff o tex keywords or tags being recognized. As for aspell, there is no "man aspell", and substituting "ispell" by "aspell" in the pine config makes the spell check to fail completely, so I have no idea how to use it. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Charles Philip Chan

03:42

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On January 19, 2003 08:39 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Could you elaborate?

I have not found any option for that in the ispell man page, it only mentions html, troff o tex keywords or tags being recognized. As for aspell, there is no "man aspell", and substituting "ispell" by "aspell" in the pine config makes the spell check to fail completely, so I have no idea how to use it.

I presume that you are talking about email quotes when you are talking about words preceeded with >. I have used Ispell and Aspell extensively with different mail clients through the years and they both work out of the box. I don't know what you problem could be. Maybe you have configured Pine to not put a space between > and the quote. With Aspell you can try: aspell -e (this puts it in email mode) and see if it helps. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+K3Ap3epPyyKbwPYRApYWAKDWm6MAWElcNamigblEH2YFR5EKuwCeICtm uda/8xTyusvrpBqQZup/1qQ= =vjrG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Carlos E. R.

19:54

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

The 03.01.19 at 22:42, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

...

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I have not found any option for that in the ispell man page, it only mentions html, troff o tex keywords or tags being recognized. As for aspell, there is no "man aspell", and substituting "ispell" by "aspell" in the pine config makes the spell check to fail completely, so I have no idea how to use it.

I presume that you are talking about email quotes when you are talking about words preceeded with >.

Right; I should have said "lines starting with '>' ie, quoted text". Pine sends the complete text to ispell, which offers corrections for the quoted text as well - and I don't think I should even try to correct text which is not mine, it is not polite :-)

...

I have used Ispell and Aspell extensively with different mail clients through the years and they both work out of the box. I don't know what you problem could be.

Well, it works, I only have to manually skip that part of the text. It works but itsn't nice.

...

Maybe you have configured Pine to not put a space between > and the quote.

Nope :-)

...

With Aspell you can try:

aspell -e

(this puts it in email mode) and see if it helps.

Mmm, no... it says: [ Alternate speller abnormally terminated (255) ] Ah, I got it working with "aspell -e -c ". I'll leave it, it works. I'll just have to remember to use "i" (ignore) and not "a" (add), which in ispell means "accept". After all, I can not configure pine for more than one language, so I'll use aspell with pine. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Doug McGarrett

24 Jan 24 Jan

02:33

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

I thought that pine was a mail program. Are you telling us that one must use a mail reader to use a spell checker? (I normally do not use a spell checker, but this seems to be pretty far out.) --doug At 20:54 01/20/2003 +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

The 03.01.19 at 22:42, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

...
...
I have not found any option for that in the ispell man page, it only mentions html, troff o tex keywords or tags being recognized. As for aspell, there is no "man aspell", and substituting "ispell" by

"aspell" in

...

...
...
the pine config makes the spell check to fail completely, so I have no idea how to use it.

I presume that you are talking about email quotes when you are talking about words preceeded with >.

Right; I should have said "lines starting with '>' ie, quoted text". Pine sends the complete text to ispell, which offers corrections for the quoted text as well - and I don't think I should even try to correct text which is not mine, it is not polite :-)

...
I have used Ispell and Aspell extensively with different mail clients through the years and they both work out of the box. I don't know what you problem could be.

Well, it works, I only have to manually skip that part of the text. It works but itsn't nice.

...
Maybe you have configured Pine to not put a space between > and the quote.

Nope :-)

...
With Aspell you can try:

aspell -e

(this puts it in email mode) and see if it helps.

Mmm, no... it says:

[ Alternate speller abnormally terminated (255) ]

Ah, I got it working with "aspell -e -c ". I'll leave it, it works. I'll just have to remember to use "i" (ignore) and not "a" (add), which in ispell means "accept". After all, I can not configure pine for more than one language, so I'll use aspell with pine.

-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

Carlos E. R.

22:40

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

The 03.01.23 at 21:33, Doug McGarrett wrote:

...

I thought that pine was a mail program. Are you telling us that one must use a mail reader to use a spell checker? (I normally do not use a spell checker, but this seems to be pretty far out.) --doug

No, you got lost somewhere in the thread :-) I comented that when using ispell with pine it doesn't skips the quoted lines, and that I had not beeen able to try aspell. Charles Philip oriented me with the last one. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

rex

20 Jan 20 Jan

03:45

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Carlos E. R. [2003-01-19 19:04]:

...

The 03.01.19 at 04:20, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

...
...
Mmm... I spell-checked the above (with ispell, I think), and it tries to correct text preceded with ">". Can "aspell" be told to ignore those lines?

Both Ispell and Aspell can do this.

Could you elaborate?

I have not found any option for that in the ispell man page, it only mentions html, troff o tex keywords or tags being recognized. As for aspell, there is no "man aspell", and substituting "ispell" by "aspell" in the pine config makes the spell check to fail completely, so I have no idea how to use it.

Is aspell installed? rex@syntax:~> which aspell /usr/bin/aspell rex@syntax:~ aspell --help Aspell .33.7.1 alpha. Copyright 2000 by Kevin Atkinson. Usage: aspell [options] <command> <command> is one of: -?|help display this help message -c|check <file> to check a file -a|pipe "ispell -a" compatibility mode -l|list produce a list of misspelled words from standard input [dump] config dumps the current configuration to stdout soundslike returns the soundslike equivalent for each word entered filter passes standard input through filters -v|version prints a version line dump|create|merge master|personal|repl [word list] dumps, creates or merges a master, personal, or replacement word list. [options] is any of the following: --conf=<str> main configuration file --conf-dir=<str> location of main configuration file --data-dir=<str> location of language data files --dict-dir=<str> location of the main word list --add|rem-extra-dicts=<str> extra dictionaries to use --add|rem-filter=<str> add or removes a filter --home-dir=<str> location for personal files -W,--ignore=<int> ignore words <= n chars --[dont-]ignore-accents ignore accents when checking words --[dont-]ignore-case ignore case when checking words --[dont-]ignore-repl ignore commands to store replacement pairs --keyboard=<str> keyboard definition to use for typo analysis --lang=<str> default language to use when all else fails --language-tag=<str> language code to use when selecting a dictionary --local-data-dir=<str> location of local language data files -d,--master=<str> base name of the main dictionary to use --mode=<str> filter mode = none,url,email,sgml,tex -e,--mode=email enter Email mode. -H,--mode=sgml enter Html/Sgml mode. -t,--mode=tex enter TeX mode. --per-conf=<str> personal configuration file -p,--personal=<str> personal word list file name --prefix=<str> prefix directory --[dont-]set-prefix set the prefix based on executable location --repl=<str> replacements list file name -C|-B,--[dont-]run-together consider run-together words legal --run-together-limit=<int> maxium numbers that can be strung together --run-together-min=<int> minimal length of interior words --[dont-]save-repl save replacement pairs on save all --[dont-]strip-accents strip accents from word lists --sug-mode=<str> suggestion mode = ultra|fast|normal|bad-spellers -b|-x,--[dont-]backup create a backup file by appending ".bak" --[dont-]reverse reverse the order of the suggest list --[dont-]time time load time and suggest time in pipe mode --add|rem-email-quote=<str> email quote characters --email-margin=<int> num chars that can appear before the quote char --add|rem-sgml-check=<str> sgml tags to always check. --add|rem-sgml-extension=<str> sgml file extensions --add|rem-tex-command=<str> TeX commands --[dont-]tex-check-comments check TeX comments The following options will be ignored for compatabilty with ispell: -m -n -P -S -w ARG -T ARG HTH, -rex

Carlos E. R.

19:57

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

The 03.01.19 at 19:45, rex wrote:

...

rex@syntax:~ aspell --help

Well, yes, but that is not the man page. I just found out that the docs are in html format. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Matthew Johnson

9 Jan 9 Jan

01:42

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Checked between Word 200 OO and StarOffice 6, on SuSE 8.1. Really do not see what the issue is, spell check works great for me. This is really quite silly subject as I don't see the problem with the spell checker in either application. Yes Word's might be slightly better over StarOffice's (and StarOffice), but thats a poor excuse to spend $400 on a piece of software. Hey I'd rather know I'm avoiding Macro viruses, rather than miss the odd bit of typo error that is really offbeat. Just my opinion...Yes it can be improved and probably will be :). Matt On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 15:07, Kevin Wilson wrote:

...

WOW! This really makes me want to run out and pay $400 for MSOffice and throw away my OpenOffice for good.

Just giving ya the business ... :-)

-----Original Message----- From: Alexandr Malusek [mailto:Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 4:36 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

Marino Fernandez writes:

...
I actually don't think so. I just downloaded and installed open office in windows and is the same thing... unless i forgot to load the same "module" on windows. I actually made some test, and MS word did a much better job:

professional OO MS Word proffessional professional professional proffesional N/A professional porffesional N/A professional poffesional N/A professional poffesiomal N/A professional poffesioanal N/A professional offesioanal N/A N/A

If OO uses ispell (I haven't checked it) then this is the default behavior of ispell:

<info ispell> If there are "near misses" in the dictionary (words which differ by only a single letter, a missing or extra letter, a pair of transposed letters, or a missing space or hyphen), then they are also displayed on following lines. As well as "near misses", ispell may display other guesses at ways to make the word from a known root, with each guess preceded by question marks.

All words for which OO didn't provide an alternative differed by at least 2 letters.

...
PS as somebody may well point out, thats because MS word is for people with brain damage... but that is a lame excuse.

I think you are right that ispell should be improved.

-- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se

Marino Fernandez

03:04

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

--- Matthew Johnson wrote:

...

Checked between Word 200 OO and StarOffice 6, on SuSE 8.1. Really do not see what the issue is, spell check works great for me.

Yes my friend, but I said OPEN OFFICE not STAR OFFICE... Open Office is Star office 5.2 plus/minus some features... apparently one of the features Star Office has that Open Office doesn't is, quoting from SuSE 8.1 User's Manual, page 162 "The spell checking utility Sun purchased for Star Office... replaced (in open office) by... myspell".

...

This is really quite silly subject

Well... I cannot think of many computer tasks SIMPLER than word processing and spelling checking... this is as real-life, end-user and productive as you can get... I do not care if I cannot play GTA3 or watch "The Bachelorette" on my linux-laptop... but not being able to write a simple letter and have it spell-check IN ENGLISH is something that I consider a pretty BIG FLAW. I have Star Office 6.0... so, what's the point... lets not elude the fact that Open Office, one of the big flagships of Open Source, is not up to the job... today, January of 2003. PS Now I know the avalanche of hate mail is comming... no worries, I already have all my filters for asshole, stupid, pendejo and others ready for it!!! Bring it on baby! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com

Matthew Johnson

05:45

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

"Yes my friend, but I said OPEN OFFICE not STAR OFFICE... Open Office is Star office 5.2 plus/minus some features... apparently one of the features Star Office has that Open Office doesn't is, quoting from SuSE 8.1 User's Manual, page 162 "The spell checking utility Sun purchased for Star Office... replaced (in open office) by... myspell"." Actually.... StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, will be built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Have you ever used SO 5.2? No is the resounding answer from that corner of the room. Oh by the way, bringing in Star office was a valid point, which you failed to miss as you were so keen on pointing out Word (which costs about $400). Yes SO6 contains some more items, a few more filters and such like. "Well... I cannot think of many computer tasks SIMPLER than word processing and spelling checking... this is as real-life, end-user and productive as you can get... I do not care if I cannot play GTA3 or watch "The Bachelorette" on my linux-laptop... but not being able to write a simple letter and have it spell-check IN ENGLISH is something that I consider a pretty BIG FLAW. " Well thats your opinion. My opinion is very much different in that both have caught my "spelling" errors to *my* satisfaction. If I miss something as big as "ofessional" in a document when reading it back I don't even deserve a "spellcheck". Of course this is my opinion :). Finally, what makes you think that a spellcheck is that simple? Might seem on the outside rather simple, but you have a lot of complex math going on that you don't see.

...

PS Now I know the avalanche of hate mail is comming... no worries, I already have all my filters for asshole, stupid, pendejo and others ready for it!!! Bring it on baby!

This just sums up your real attitude, you're just here to Troll...And on a really quite small issue. This is a SuSE mailing list, if you want to troll on about how bad Open Office is, may I suggest going here? http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html At least that way your issue can be addressed. But of course, you're not serious. Ever even tried installing more dictionaries? http://ooodi.sourceforge.net/OOodi.html Sheesh, talk about an obnoxious user... Matt -- Matthew Johnson

Marino Fernandez

06:07

New subject: [SLE] MS Word spelling checker beats Open Office's!!

--- Matthew Johnson wrote: My friend, peace, you win. I got carried away, forgive me. So, now, the only thing I'd like to know is if there is something to do about the spelling-checking in Open Office... is there an alternative dictionary or module, to make Open Office do a better job with its spelling checking capabilities. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com

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participants (9)

Alexandr Malusek
Ben Rosenberg
Carlos E. R.
Charles Philip Chan
Doug McGarrett
Kevin Wilson
Marino Fernandez
Matthew Johnson
rex