Thanks for explaining Chris. I'm glad to know how to spellcheck my
documents :)
I think it's pretty debatable whether the default arrangement where you
don't get a message saying "I don't have the dictionary for this
language" is useful or not. I think that quite a lot of people would
get themselves into the same tangle I did, by not realising that a
language they had chosen in some setup option was actually unavailable,
and that therefore the spellcheck wouldn't identify wrong words, and
also wouldn't tell them that it wasn't even trying. I only realised
there was something "wrong" because my original document contained
terminology that I knew wouldn't be in most dictionaries - otherwise I
would have simply assumed that my spelling was all correct and the
spellcheck was finding nothing wrong. I'd guess that this behaviour is
more dangerous/inconvenient than a default setting where the
spellchecker does let you know that it doesn't have a dictionary installed.
I still don't understand how, in that case, I got a couple of times a
message telling me that the English(US) dictionary wasn't there. It
seems that sometimes it does tell you when there isn't a dictionary.
But I'm not going to worry about that now :)
If I was making a suggestion to the people who write the software, I'd
suggest that something is added to
1) Allow the user to change whether the spellcheck tells you about
missing dictionaries
2) Make this setting have the default that it does tell you.
So people writing in different languages without having the dictionary
installed (surely that wouldn't come up too often - there is a pretty
extensive list of dictionaries available) could switch the warnings off
if desired. But people like me who are just trying to spellcheck in
English but don't realise that the spellcheck is not doing anything
because it doesn't have a dictionary don't get caught by that.
It would also be helpful if they:
3) Add in something to the help system under language settings and
spellcheck to make it clearer that when you change the language setting
you are only changing it for the selected characters, not for the whole
document.
I read the help for spellchecking and for language settings and didn't
realise that the option I was changing wasn't changing for the whole
document, especially since I didn't have any text selected while I
changed it. I did wonder why an "obviously" global setting would be in
the character menu, but it didn't click to me that it might not be
global. Call me stupid ;)
Helen.
Chris Halls wrote:
On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 18:47, Helen Faulkner wrote:
OK, but please answer both questions. Is there a tick mark?
Sorry - I thought you meant the same thing both times.
The answer is yes to both questions. Yes the language was set to
ENglish (UK) the time I looked, and also in the options default setting.
And yes, there is a tick mark next to that language in the list (it's
the only one with a tick mark in that list).
OK. That means, the dictionary is correctly installed and OOo has found
it.
But I have noticed the
program is acting more strangely than I initally thought. Maybe the
problem is to do with how the program remembers the user options.
It seems to be a problem with your understanding of how the language
setting works.
Here's an example run:
1 open test.doc (attached) with openoffice.org writer.
2 right-click in text field -> character. Language setting is
English(Australia)
3 tools -> spellcheck -> check. Incorrect behaviour where it says
spellcheck is complete without having noticably done anything, or
identified wrongly spelled word, or told me that I don't have the right
dictionary
Correct behaviour. Spellcheck is only carried out for those languages
where you have a dictionary installed.
Imagine you are working on a document which is mostly in English but has
several sections in a language that you do not have the dictionary
installed for. If OOo popped up a message every time for those sections
that did not have a dictionary installed, you would get pretty sick of
it. So it just skips those sections which are in a language that it
can't check.
4 right-click in text field -> character. Change language setting to
English (UK).
5 tools -> spellcheck -> check. Same incorrect behaviour.
Wrong conclusion. And I think this is your problem. The Language
setting is in the Character format dialog for a very good reason. It is
a character attribute, not a global setting. It behaves in exactly the
same way as any other character attribute, such as Bold, Italic and
Underline. If you click on the Bold button without having marked text,
nothing will change because OOo expects you to type in new text, which
will be marked as bold. In the same way, if you change the language
without having selected any text, nothing will happen.
Therefore if you want to change the language of your whole document, you
must choose 'Select All' before making your change. Otherwise nothing
will happen.
[snip]
So I'm observing the following behaviours:
1) The language setting doesn't stay set to what you change it to,
necessarily.
Because it is a character attribute not a global setting - you must have
selected something, or type something new after the change.
2) When an unavailable language is set, there usually isn't a message
saying that dictionary isn't there (I did see such a message a couple of
times, but not mostly)
The reason being, it can get very annoying for someone editing documents
in multiple languages.
3) When an available language is set, the spellcheck sometimes works
and sometimes doesn't work at all.
4) The default language setting in the options dialog sometimes changes
without apparent cause.
See 1.
I'll attach the file I was using in the above, but I won't be suprised
if you can't reproduce this behaviour, seeing as it's acting so
erratically on me.
If I mark all the text and change the language, all is ok.
Chris
