Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 22261
Spell Check fails on this word import.
Last modified: 2024-01-18 17:23:07 UTC
This document, as you can see, is a sxw file ... but was originally a MS-Word document that was Saved As. If you open this file, you will find that spell check does not work, and even worse that it reports no errors. Of course I didn't realize this until I had already interefered with my work, so I consider this pretty major bug due to its disruptiveness. I have sent this document to other people and verified that the same spellcheck doesn't work for them and so the problem must be embeded somewhere in the document. Where? I dunno. Only way to recover the document that Ive found is to save as .txt. Why is there no attach file like in bugzilla ?
Created attachment 11053 [details] here is the example file where spell check fails.
Hi, The text in the document you posted indicates that the language setting was "none". To change this simply highlight the text and go to Format->Character->Font and set the language pulldown to be whatever language the text is written in. You might want to check what the "language attribute was of the original word document you imported. Once you tell it what language the text is in, spellchecker will happily find incorrecy words in that language. But since your document indiocated the text had no language attribute set there was nothing to spell check. Kevin
I have posted another document to that save URL. This document has spell check working in top half but not the bottom half. I checked the Language settings and they are set to English. This document was originally imported as a TEXT file.
Utomo > Kevin: Can we improve by asking to user to choose the language, when the documents didnt have language setting, and user do the spellcheck ? This will reduce user problems
Hi, What same url? I rechecked the other.sxw and nothing has changed. You simply have to highlight the text and tell it what language attribute it has. In this case I changed it to English[USA] and the spellcheck found every incorrect word. If spell check is failing on improted text, there are only two reasons: - the language in the document improted from was not properly set which results in the lnaguage attribute of "none" under OOo - the document uses a font that does not exsit on the system (or is not available to OOo) and there is no graphics device that can tell OOo that the font in question is NOT a graphics/symbol font (i.e. OOo thinks that font is just a bunch of pictures like symbol or zapf dingbats and so ignores anything written in that font). The solutions are apparent: - make sure the Word document you are using and improting from has the language attribute properly set for the text in question. - make sure the fonts you need are available to OOo Kevin KBH->Utomo: I often set text blocks to language none in my docs to prevent spellcheck on them (lots of fancy math that I don't want touched in any way), so how are we supposed to know whether to warn or not warn? The only real solution is to add a clear "language indicator" to the toolbar so that whenever text is selected, you can easily see the language it is in and can easily change it without having to go to Format->Character->Font (which is a strange place to put language information anyway). Either that of a Format->Character->Language menu item. My 2 cents. Kevin
reassigend to jw
I sure am surprise to learn about the range of issues that can cause spellcheck to fail. I've found another additional way that makes spell check fail too, which is too simply type the word in all CAPS. You didn't mention that one Kevin! After eventually discovering which of the many things was causing this, I then found under the options/language menu the ability to actually check words in all caps. Im still trying to figure out where the logic comes that just because a person wanted a word in caps, that therefor it does not need to be spelled correctly. The language problem still rests uneasy. I can "check what the language attribute was of the original word document", but that doesn't change the fact that spell check isn't working on all my docs where it used to work in MS-Word. Now I have one more step I have to explain to everyone when i tell them how easy it is to make the switch to OpenOffice, and likely many people will end up printing documents with misspellings as I did. Isn't the whole point of spellcheck so that users can feel safe, and not feel like they they are better off proof reading their documents on their own? How about prompting on imports for the option of changing the language to the users default.
There is an option in the dialog "Tools / Options - Language Settings - Writing Aids" named "Check uppercase words" that toggles if words that are completely written in uppercase letters should be checked or not. By default that option is not set because often sth like that is used for company names e.g. SUN, or abbreaviations like OO for OpenOffice , UNO, or technical issues / abstracts like CPU, ISO-8859-1, DIN, etc. which are usually too numerous to be known by a spellchecker and thus would always be marked as incorrect if the default was not not to check those.
It is largely preferable to have a red curvy line underneath a word that is okay, then to not have a red curvy line underneath a word that is spelled wrong. Hence the purpose of having the right click, ignore word feature. It is just as easy to think of instances of words in CAPS that need spell check, and likewise to think of words without caps that would still fail...ex, most all proper nouns. Shouldn't it be a higher priority to deliver the user possible errors rather then to implement 'general' rules which give false verification. That just seems to be the whole point of such a tool. Else, best implement a user choice for spellcheck which says 'strict' or 'lossy' mode. Those are what we are deciding between.
Hi, You seem to be missing the point. The User has the option to select whether they want to spellcheck all CAPS or not. Frankly, I do not want to spell check all CAPS in many my docs since I use acronyms, abbreviations, and variable names for regression models and do not want them all underlined with a red curvey. The key is the User himself, herself determines that. The spell check engine itself handles all CAPS well so this is not a lingucomponent issue. I still have not seen what the language attribute was for the original text file imported. If it had no language set, then OOo did the right thing and this issue should be closed. If it was properly set in the original document to something that exists under OOo, then this is an importing word bug and should be filed not as an enhancement, but instead as a bug / defect for word importing. Then, the user in question should attach the original word document (stripped down to the smallest form that shows the error) to this issue. That said, the only real issue I see here is that we give the User no feedback to the language that the text is in. We really need (IMHO) to add a field to the toolbar that shows the current language of the text and allos the user to change it easily. Either that or change the menus to highlight the fact that language attributes exist and can be changed (read that a Format->Character->Language) or somehting of the like. If that is the case, then this should be changed to an enhancement request to the sw project explaining why you think that might be important. Kevin
Kevin - Thanks for hearing me out on those things. I checked the word doc and it does appear that the only language set in the doc is US English.
Hi, If language in the original doc was US English then this really is an importing bug. Please try to strip out as much info from the original word doc as possible and then submit as an attachment to this issue to be used to help track down this bug. I can then import that document and see the same trouble and then officially "confirm" this issue and get it noticed by the correct Hamburg developer to evaluate for possible solutions. Thanks, Kevin
two things in here are really interresting. first kevin we should open a enhancement issue for your idea of setting a language field in the toolbar. this is in my eyes a realy good idea. second i think if office detects a uppercase text on the first start of the spellchecker, on a newly installed office, a popupwindow should appear asking to make spellcheck of uppercase text the default or the spellcheck dialog should allways popup and a checkbox "check uppercase text" should be available.
Those sounds like good ideas, but since CAPS words have the same behavior in Word by default, I think the language none might be a bigger issue as far as competiteness goes. Prompting the user on import would seem a good fix. Or even making a default option to import all docs to the users local languages (should work for 99% of users.)
another thing, can you attach the original word document, so we can see if the import fails adding the language setting for this document? if so, this might be a bug. else i will send this issue as enhancement to the owner of OOo enhancement issues.
changed to enhancement reassigend to bh
set to new as this has obviously been confirmed.
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised has the status 'New' pending further action, but has not been updated within the last 4 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".
Created attachment 87209 [details] Screenshot Not reproduce with AOO 4.1.15 and english thesaurus
Please update