Pāli is a middle Indic language. It is reguarded as a died language by some, but anyway there are so many people who chant daily, morning and evening, in that language almost everywhere in the world. I’m not a computer scientist but I suppose that it would be very easy to make a Pāli dictionary available for spell check. Many, probably the most of Pāli texts, have been digitalized. Please, take a look to this link just for an example: SuttaCentral
At this further link CST4 Desktop Software , you can download a program which will enable you to display all the discourse of Buddha in Pāli togheter with a lot of commentaries, subcommentaries, grammatical works on Pāli language in Pāli and so on.
Could this help in making a Pāli dictionary for spell check?
Read this thread, it contains some guidance on creating spellcheck dictionaries:
Thank you for your tip. I have spent some time in reading the thread. It sounds a little bit too difficult for my low computer skills but I will not give up all in a once and will try to find someone to help me.
It’s somewhat tricky indeed, but no big problem. Start collecting words. Ask questions. Good luck!
I’m working to produce a word list. I have taken a long text (117 pages) cleaning up all punctuation and other things. I made a odt file like this attached. I suppose that it is not possible to make a spellcheck using this. If so, what should I do? Any tips? Thank you.Sīlakkhandhavaggapāḷi.odtPāli.odt
Don’t answer your own question (unless it is a real answer). Use the comment option, or modify the question, or ask a new one.
If you prefer to work in Calc, read:
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Removing_Duplicate_Rows
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5379
I’ve edited your file (see attached on the bottom of your posting) using the how-to from the first link, it’s quite quick.
I answered my own question because if I use comment option, I’m not able to see how to attach files…
You can’t attach files to comments. Either attach it to the original post or use a file sharing service.
I apologize for the confusion that I might have created. For the same reason, I edited my answer above and attached a new file which you have maybe not seen. Sorry for the incovenience.
I have a long Pāli word list both in txt and pmd formats. Is it now possible to make the dictionary from this? If yes, I could send them in a private email as I was not able to attach these formats in the forum here.
Just change the filename extension to odt and attach (and it is a good idea to zip the txt file).
Below is the link for the zipped txt file. I attached the odt in the original post.
Thank you. It works well. Maybe the spell checker could be offered in the extensions https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions. I will continue to collect words in the next time. I have in the meantime another question: is it possible to build also a hyphenator for Pāli? Maybe it would be sufficient to use a Sanskrit hyphenator if it exists. I will ask someone whether it is linguistically correct to do this.
Now, I have a complete word list for all the Tipiṭakaṃ (all Buddha’s discourses in Pāli). The list is based on a huge file of more that 6,000 pages. I cannot attach the list because it is too big. I send you it at the following link: Dropbox - Pāli_gabix - Simplify your life
There are two version of the list Pāli ṃ and Pāli ṁ because some use either of these two symbols when typesetting Pāli. Could be a good idea to develop to dic files, Pāli ṃ.dic and Pāli ṁ.dic?
Please note that in the folder is also a .dic hyphenator for Pāli which Cittānurakkho Bhikkhu was so kind to share. Would it be a trouble to make an affix file alongside with this so that we could have both spell checker and hyphenator in the language package for Pāli? Thank you.
Dear Gabix, did you see my last update/comment to this question?
Sorry, I was not notified about your comments and discovered them only today.
Could be a good idea to develop to dic files, Pāli ṃ.dic and Pāli ṁ.dic?
Well, it depends on your needs and preferences. At first glance, the situation is slightly similar to Russian, where some people prefer to always use the letter ё, but others avoid it using е instead. Thus, three varieties of dictionaries exist: with ё, without ё, and mixed. Maybe, there should be three varieties for Pali, too.
As for other questions, I will try to answer them later.
Then, it would be great if you can make two dictionaries Pāli ṃ and Pāli ṁ similarly to the situation you describe for Russian. Some prefer using ṃ but others prefer ṁ. The dropbox link that you see above still works. Could you make the dictionaries starting from those word lists?
Here is a link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16MB_rIOypsVkPTnbso3BfBBGmAdkI5Tc?usp=sharing
The directory contains two dictionaries: pali-mdotabove.oxt (for ṁ) and pali-mdotbelow.oxt (for ṃ), both including the hyphenation dictionary that you provided. You need to set Pali Latin for a text to check/hyphenate. Note that you can install only one of the dictionaries. If you install another, you will be warned that the dictionary is already installed. This means, that a previous one will be overwritten.
Would it be a trouble to make an affix file…
No trouble. I simply can’t make an affix file because I would need to learn the grammar of Pali for such a task. However, although I love learning languages, Pali is not on my to-learn list (so far, who knows what happens next).
Thank you very much for your work, Gabix. That we have a Pāli spell checker with hyphenation are very good news. I will let others know about it!
Dear Gabix, in the link above is a much bigger word list. Could you please make a spell checker with this list for Pāli ṃ? Thank you.