Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 88573
Language selector for alternative french dictionaries
Last modified: 2013-01-29 21:39:37 UTC
There is 6 locales for French language [French (France), French(Canada), etc.], but I don't think all of them use different dictionaries. The french spelling reform of 1990 is not mandatory, and we have 3 dictionaries for that, one for the classical spelling, one for the new spelling and one for both of them. But users have no tool to select the dictionary they would like to use. We could use the language selector for that. In the dictionary extension: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/fr-dic the classical and new spelling dictionary is set on French(France) locale, the classical spelling dictionary is set on French(Monaco), the new spelling dictionary is set on French(Luxembourg). There is perhaps an simple way to rename unused french locale or add new ones for alternative dictionaries.
We had time to think about it, and the best would be to create specific "localizations" for the different French spellings. Example: fr_cl (classical spelling) fr_re (reformed spelling) fr_me (merged dictionary) This way, each localisation (fr_FR, fr_BE, fr_CA, fr_CH, fr_MC and fr_LU) could have his own default dictionary and switch to the others ones without using a localisation of another country. @tl: it was said on lingu-dev that this kind of issues should be assigned to you. Sorry, I was wrong.
Correction: - Sorry, I was wrong. + Sorry if I was wrong.
This comment gives more background on the issue. The Classical / reformed orthography problem is a hot topic for many users. The reform is optional, except for some users, working in some public administrations, where it is mandatory. The exact situation is country specific. However, there is no place where it is globally mandatory, nor forbidden. On a personal level, some people are vehemently against the reform, other are hotly in favor, and many people don't really care or even know, as long as their spell-checker is working coherently. The current default behavior is to provide check-spelling for both accepted orthography, which many see as a "worst of both worlds" approach. This approach tends to generate documents with incoherent orthography, both orthographies being valid at once, ie unprofessional documents. (For English speakers, that would be as if both US and UK orthographies were valid at once and you could find in the same document both “color” and “colour” being accepted as valid.) Users can desinstall the default dictionary-extension which provides both orthography as one and install the individual classical/reformed dictionary-extension. However, only an administrator can desinstall or deactivate the default extension, which is a problem. This also requires that the user find that the classical/reformed orthography choice is tied to extensions, which isn't intuitive at all. Switching from one orthography to the other requires restarting OOo and the Quickstarter. This is a major annoyance. Editing documents in both orthographies is impossible, as the orthography choice is application-wide and not per document. The orthography the document is written in isn't saved in the document, so an user needs to open the document and, if the document is written in the other orthography, the user must change extensions (deactivate one, activate the other) and restart OOo and the Quuickstarter. It is impossible to have working check-spelling in a document which contains texts in both orthographies, eg a reformed text with quotes from a classical one. It is very important for the French-speaking users to be able to specify which orthography to use as variants of languages (which they are). [It would be even better to be able to choose which variant to use without loosing the ability to choose a regional variant, but we understand it isn’t possible in OOo for the time being.]
tl->auberon: considering the availability of the three different French dictionary extensions is this still a problem? (see http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/dictionaries)
When I consider this problem anew, I think the simpliest way would be to include all dictionaries in one extension and have options to set what dictionary is used by locales. By the way, we have now 4 dictionaries. http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/fr/project/french-dictionary-modern
tl->olivierr: that would of course be the easiest option but we ditched that already before because we were missing an UI that allows the user to select one or more specific dictionaries to use with a given language. And that still has not changed. But you are right the current use was right from the start already just a work-around for that missing UI.
shouldn't this issue be confirmed somehow ?
tl->mh: It is not set to confirmed (or started) since it is still unclear which of two possible solutions to go for: a) provide a modified OOo UI that allows the user to select one (or more?) individual dictionaries (not extensions!) to be used for each language. or b) the extension provider can bundle all dictionaries into a SINGLE extension AND provides UI means for the user to choose a single dictionary to use. I would prefer a) but right now UX has no time to design a new UI and the question if just one or more dictionaries to choose from should be allowed raises follow-up questions that make UI design complicated. Also right now there seems to be not much time available to implement new (or modified) dialogs. On the other hand the problem can be solved by the extension provider but that will probably led to different extensions implementing different UI and also translation of that UI needs to be provided by the extension or not be done at all. Last but not least I think dictionary extension providers should not be bothered with writing UI.