Spellchecking does not work for writer document

[alex5730]

Using libre office writer 6.4.7.2 the spell checking does not seem to work for French.

Under ‘Tools’ → ‘options’ → ‘Language Settings’ → ‘Language’ I have set “Default Languages for Documents” → ‘France’

But when I type some random word in the document and run the spell checker nothing is marked as incorrect.

Also, in ‘Tools’ → ‘Spelling’ the language is [None]. How to set French as the spell checking language,. as spell checking only (NOT the language for the writer itself, menus etc).

Is there a bug somewhere?

And why is that language spell checker so damn complicated to use? (You have “Tools → options”, you have “spellchecking” and you have “Tools-> Language”. 3 places to check what is going on, and you still do not find a way to change the spell checking language)

[ajlittoz]

What is your OS? Spellchecking needs a language-specific module to be installed plus dictionary. Installation method depends on OS.

Setting default language for documents in options is sufficient to language-tag your text, provided this is done before creating new documents (Writer will not change existing documents without your approval). The option setting is not effective only if you customised Default Paragraph Style forcing some other language in the Font tab. The same if you changed Text Body or any other style you use in your document.

[mikekaganski]

@ajlittoz

Setting default language for documents in options is sufficient to language-tag your text, provided this is done before creating new documents

Please always remember that there is the feature to consider OS input language, active by default on some platforms (currently they are only Windows and Qt). It is controlled at Options|Language Settings|Languages (you can disable it using Ignore system input language). That feature enables users to enjoy easy language-tagging their typed texts according to the language they set at OS level - with the “downside” that improper configuration of OS-level language would give unexpected results (as always with improper setup).

[alex5730]

It is ubuntu 20.04.4 I have no idea if a spelling module is installed. I expect libre office writer to check this (kind of obvious)…

[mikekaganski]

@alex5730

ubuntu 20.04.4

It is quite obvious that one looks at the OS-specific documentation that describes what that OS package creators (not the authors of LibreOffice!) decided to install by default

[alex5730]

Not obvious at all. Absolutely not obvious!!

Libre office should tell me “Hey, you want a new language? You find the install instructions here: …”

But: nothing. Rien. Nichts

[mikekaganski]

@alex5730

Libre office should tell me

How? Say, I am developing an application. Another one (I don’t even know that person) decides to take my application and put to Ubuntu repository, and that person documents that in their wiki. How could I ever put anything like what you describe into my code? That’s how Linux works for you.

[alex5730]

At least I expect libre office to tell me: "French is not installed/ not found.Google on how to install it in your OS. "

Also, the instructions in LibreOffice - Ubuntu Wiki do not seem to work.
I did

sudo apt install libreoffice-l10n-fr

restarted libre office and → nothing. same problem. Do I have to install ALL of it? Install it differently? Tell Ubuntu to do something? Tell libre office to do something?

[mikekaganski]

@alex5730

I did

sudo apt install libreoffice-l10n-fr

… and indeed, you didn’t followed the dcumentation carefully, not installing the other packages beyond the UI localization (so dictionary is not installed).

OTOH, that wiki is not up-to-date, because it mentioned myspell dictionaries, while currently hunspell is used. But third-party wikis are … well, you might want to edit it, or notify Ubuntu maintainers.

@alex5730

At least I expect libre office to tell me: "French is not installed/ not found.Google on how to install it in your OS. "

It is documented in help (available form the spell check dialog).

[alex5730]

Not helping installing a language

[mikekaganski]

I agree, it requires reading skills. Reading this:

To check the spelling and the grammar of a text, the appropriate dictionaries must be installed. For many languages three different dictionaries exist: a spellchecker, a hyphenation dictionary, and a thesaurus. Each dictionary covers one language only. Grammar checkers can be downloaded and installed as extensions. See the extensions web page.

would indeed not help one realize that.

[alex5730]

It is still bad quality software. Libre office should notify the user when a language is not installed. How should I know if there is a problem!

To tell the user to read ALL the documentation does not help at all.

[mikekaganski]

Not having any dictionary installed is a normal situation. You may mark any text with any language, and many languages do not have a dictionary in existence (e.g., some ancient languages). Throwing such things into user is not appropriate (users consider such warnings intrusive; we have similar things for hyphenation, which is important because not having hyphenation modules makes document layout different).

Note that you are not expected to “read ALL the documentation”. But note how you got here: you had a problem. And when a user has some practical question, it’s the point when the user is expected to start reading relevant documentation - that is brought to you in the relevant place, using Help button right in the dialog. In the end, that’s what the help is created for. Your reasoning is “help should be completely erased, because users should not read it in any case”.

Anyway, this is tdf#143689.

[ajlittoz]

@alex5730

Libre office should notify the user when a language is not installed.

Which one? LO has been localised for hundreds of language variants. Should it list all possible languages? Obviously no. A user usually works in a handful of languages at most (most common case: only one). If this language is not Globish (the international lingua franca for computer software), is it too much to request installation of YOUR preferred language(s)?

I am not under Ubuntu but I’m surprised by the fact you need to manually install the “dependencies”. Under Fedora, if I want to install libreoffice-package-fr (note the different name which illustrates the liberty of distribution package maintainers), the missing packages for hunspell, autocorr, hyphen and even libreoffice will be automatically installed.

[alex5730]

So for ubuntu you seem to have to do

sudo apt install myspell-fr

in order to use French as a spelling language.