[Solved] Edit Standard/Custom Dictionary / French Input

[White Phoenix]

Is there a way to edit the standard and/or custom dictionary directly the way you can with MS Word? I have added quite a few new words, but they were at the beginning of sentences and therefore capitalized. I need to convert them to all lowercase and it would be much easier if it was a text file where I could just edit them all at once instead of having to add each word one at a time using the editor in the Tools>Options>Writing Aids>User defined dictionaries>Edit.

[Caracalla]

In the main Openoffice directory go to ...\share\dict\ooo there you will find the dictionary, hyphenation and thesaurus files.

[White Phoenix]

Well, I found the dictionary files, but not the custom/user-defined dictionary. The en_US dictionary did not have any of the words that I added.

So the standard dictionary or at least en_US.dic would not need to be edited. So where is the dictionary that contains the added words?

[RGB]

Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Writing aids. Under "User-defined dictionaries", select the dictionary from the list and press Edit.

[White Phoenix]

Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Writing aids. Under "User-defined dictionaries", select the dictionary from the list and press Edit.

Postby White Phoenix on Fri, 04 Jul 2008 2:32 am
Is there a way to edit the standard and/or custom dictionary directly the way you can with MS Word? I have added quite a few new words, but they were at the beginning of sentences and therefore capitalized. I need to convert them to all lowercase and it would be much easier if it was a text file where I could just edit them all at once instead of having to add each word one at a time using the editor in the Tools>Options>Writing Aids>User defined dictionaries>Edit.

[Hagar Delest]

The custom dictionary file is in your OOo user profile (\Documents and settings\<user<\Application Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\wordbook). But I don't think we can edit the file like that.

[White Phoenix]

Yeah, that was about the only thing I liked about Word. All of the custom dictionary files were text files, they were all in the same folder, and they were easily edited. They were also limited because the custom dictionaries didn’t really recognize case, hyphenated words, compound words or words with apostrophes. (Imakuni, eBay, Kool-aid, déjà vu, Kamakawiwo’ole)

[Caracalla]

in OOo 3.0 the dictionaries will be released in the form of extensions. Perhaps something will change about the custom dictionaries as well?

[White Phoenix]

Mozilla products use dictionaries that are extensions. The custom/user-defined dictionaries are completely non-editable and the authors do not seem to care. The creator of Boxer Text Editor uses a third-party plug-in dictionary. The dictionary itself is non-editable, but the user dictionary is a simple text file that is easily edited. There use to be another text editor that had a more complex editable user-defined dictionary that would allow you to identify what parts of speech the words were. If OpenOffice were to have something like that it would work. Perhaps I should preempt this move to dictionary extensions, and find someone who has made a user-friendly customizable dictionary extension compatible with OpenOffice already. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly more difficult to use Downloads.Com. They have been lousing up the UI on their site. Hopefully CNET hasn’t bought out TUCOWS yet. . . .

I just searched TUCOWS, Downloads.Com and Google for one and found nothing. The prospects are not good. 8-(

This is stupid. The only thing that needs to be done to make the spellchecker perfect is to make the custom dictionary (-ies) directly editable.

EDIT: I just finished filing an issue for an enhancement for the spellchecker. In doing so I looked up the new features of OOo 3 and the history of MySpell and the Hunspell spinoff that will be in the new release. I already mentioned Firefox and Thunderbird also had a user dictionary that couldn’t be edited. That is MySpell which according to the issues was supposed to have an editable custom dictionary. Hunspell is based on MySpell and apparently still has not addressed this issue. Although the spellchecker I have installed is Ispell. I am going crazy. I am posting a message at SourceForge. Great. Another forum I have to join just to ask one question.

[Hagar Delest]

I just finished filing an issue for an enhancement for the spellchecker.

Then, don't forget to post the url here so that interested users can vote for it: Issue 91392 - Request for a way to edit the custom dictionary directly.

[White Phoenix]

Then, don't forget to post the url here so that interested users can vote for it: . . . .

Who? Me forget something? 8-S
Anyway, good idea, Hagar. Thanks.
This is the thread I found and posted on at SourceForge who makes Hunspell: Check Spelling

[Sigurd]

Thanks for the reply. Looks like the simple answer is there is no functionality for editing the user dictionaries.

Sad.


Sigurd

[james_h]

You might be interested in Hacking OpenOffice.org dictionaries by Bruce Byfield at Linux.com, which tells how to edit the standard.dic user dictionary.

See: http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/51675. Look for the "Adding a user-defined dictionary" heading.

While the advice is specifically written for Linux installations, you can determine the location of the local user's dictionary for your particular version of the OpenOffice.org program you are using and your operating system. While an OpenOffice.org window is open, use Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths and look at the common root of the user paths. For example, if you see that the path for the user autocorrect files is /home/your_name/.openoffice.org/3/user/autocorr and the path for the user autotext files is /home/your_name/.openoffice.org/3/user/autotext, then the common path for local user files is /home/your_name/.openoffice.org/3/user/. The local dictionary is in /home/your_name/.openoffice.org/3/user/wordbook.

Make sure your system is set up to show file extensions. Make a copy of the original dictionary and rename it standard.txt. When you have edited the dictionary with OpenOffice.org writer, you can rename it back to standard.dic.

Remember to back up your original dictionary so that you can replace it in case you make the copy unusable by editing it manually.

[White Phoenix]

I have noticed since 3.4 came out that the dictionaries have been changed to text files with a ‘DIC’ extension. Under Windows 7 they are in <system drive>/Users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/OpenOffice.org/3/user/wordbook/
Standard.DIC is the default user dictionary. They are not only editable, but you can save time and create custom dictionaries and place them in the folder for use in OpenOffice. All you do is follow the basic format of the standard dictionary. All of the headings follow the same pattern. This is as near to the syntax as I can figure out. After the heading each word appears on its own line in alphabetical order. Words beginning with uppercase come first, then the lowercase words. Diacriticals and punctuation such as apostrophes, real apostrophes and hyphens are accepted. Capitals take precedence in the alphabetizing. Periods are not used at the ends of abbreviations. Great job whoever did this.

OOoUserDict# (where # is a number; the standard dictionary is 1; the number may determine the priority)
lang: <none> (I am not sure what syntax to use for this, either the name itself [English] or the typical code [us-EN])
type: positive (just leave this)
--- (this marks the end of the heading)

If anyone can add more to the explanation of the heading, please do.

[lmselby]

Hello,

I have been working mainly with LibreOffice 4.0 and tried to bring in a Haitian Creole custom dictionary that I had used in Microsoft Word 2003 and Microsoft Word 2010. I created a new dictionary in Writer and then edited it with Wordpad in the C:\Users\[name of my computer]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\wordbook by copying and pasting all of my entries in the old custom dictionary under the header Writer created.

I am primarily tacking in between Haitian Creole and English as I write my dissertation, so the default language is English.

All letters with the grave accent show up in Writer as white question marks within black diamonds. I do not want to have to edit all of the thousands of words with accents in them within Writer. I thought that maybe the problem was the encoding of the .dic document when I saved it in Wordpad, but noticed that Writer does not recognize .dic files that are not in ANSI.

I do not know how to run macros as suggested in other posts to enter new words one by one into a custom dictionary in Writer and would like to know if there are any simple steps I can take to remedy this situation within Wordpad.

I would be grateful for your advice, fellow forum users.

[Hagar Delest]

A dirty trick perhaps:
- add (from the Writer interface) a word with a grave accent
- Check how that accent has been encoded in the .dic file
- Search and Replace all the wrong characters by this one and save the file.

[lmselby]

Thanks for suggesting the above. I tried a few strategies related to what you suggested.

It seems like the "�" shows up when I try to edit the .dic document within Writer for the first time after I pasted all my new entries into a Writer-created dictionary in Wordpad. There are also some "|" and narrow rectangular symbols instead of the black diamond with the white question mark to replace the accented vowels. There is something about the long wait of loading the 226KB .dic document that transforms the three accented vowels I use in Haitian Creole, "à," "è," and "ò." They all show up as "�." While I am waiting, the Task Manager lists the Writer process' status as "Not Responding" and I wait, wait, wait until it is finally done.

I created a new dictionary and added three different words with "à," "è," and "ò." They appear the same as they originally were entered when I open the .dic document in Wordpad. When I close and open Writer again and prompt to edit this new, tiny dictionary of three entries, the accented vowels appear the same. When I go to the mutated 226KB .dic file in Wordpad to find "�" to replace some it with "à,""è," or "ò," the find function cannot find "�".

As I did not want to go one by one of the 25,000 some entries I have in this dictionary and manually look for the "�" symbol, delete it, and then paste either "à," "è," or "ò" that I copy from the three words that appear normal in the tiny dictionary, I went back to the original .dic document in Wordpad while I had the small .dic still open in Wordpad as well. I found and replaced the "à," "è," and "ò" in the original large .dic with a "à," "è," or "ò" that I copied from the small .dic, and then I copied the entries and pasted them into the small .dic document and made sure that the old words I had put in through Writer were in alphabetical order. I saved as the small .dic document with the same name and a .dic suffix as the small .dic document was originally saved so I would not lose the .dic document in my list of user defined dictionaries in Writing Aids in Writer. [I lose the .dic files I save in Wordpad unless I "save as" the modified .dic into an ANSI file with the same title with .dic as a suffix and replace the old file. If I "save as" into a UTF-8 .dic file, I lose the .dic file from my list of user defined dictionaries in Writing Aids in Writer.]

When I open up Writer again, I still have problems with the accented words. I go to see into Options-Language Settings-Writing Aids to see how my original entries and my new entries in the dictionary appear, and something about adding new accented words in the .dic file from Wordpad messes things up. Most of the accented vowels are the "�" symbol with a small minority as "|" or a narrow rectangular symbol. So my original entries that I added within Writer have the accented vowels replaced by symbols.

Do I have to learn how to run macros, then, or learn how to create a dictionary like people who program the dictionaries as extensions?

Thank you for trying to find a simpler alternative.

[lmselby]

I do not know how to program, but followed all the instructions on the post Mon Aug 16, 2010 11:17 am in
http://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/vi ... =7&t=33297
and used the files that "franx" provides. Once I created an archive folder (.zip) and renamed it with the suffix .oxt, I followed the instructions within LibreOffice in Tools>Extension Manager>Add and I was able to select the oxt folder and install the dictionary. I did not make any changes in the name of the OpenOffice versions used. Please advise me if I have to make changes according to the LibreOffice 4.0 version installed on my computer. Thanks in advance.

[White Phoenix]

Do you want an extension or just a user dictionary? The custom user dictionaries that I described, like the standard, are text files. Wordpad and Writer are document files with formatting code. For the .DIC files, you have to save in plain text with Notepad.

For a dictionary extension, I don’t know. You probably should post on a different thread for that. Possibly in the forum for extensions? You should get more help there if you are trying to create a dictionary extension.

[durecu]

Hi lmselby,

Did you finally manage to get your Haitian Creole custom dictionary working ?

I have the same issue with accented letters and would be grateful to hear from anybody who succeeded without progamming.

[White Phoenix]

You may find the solution on another thread, since I suggested to Imselby that he should start a new thread for his problem. Especially since I don’t think he wants a custom dictionary, but a dictionary extension.

However, along with AOO now using plain text files for the dictionaries so they can be edited and corrected (even saving in UTF-8) I have come across two other useful programs.

The first is Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964665.aspx) which allows you to create a custom keyboard so you can type in non-standard characters direct from the keyboard. For example these are characters from my extended keyboard: āĀēĒīĪÿŸ‘’“”—–†‡∞ãÃ♂♀®łŁžŽŝŜ¿«»‹›¦„şŞ∵∴√′″åÅ°∷

It was fairly simple to use and hasn’t caused any problems like so many other Microsoft products. The only real problem is when you are using a program that might override your keyboard with its hot keys. But when I created mine I deliberately planned it to avoid conflicts with other programs I use frequently (like AOO).

The other program I use for entering in foreign words and such is AutoHotKey L. (http://l.autohotkey.net/) I don’t use its hot key function, but it comes with a comprehensive auto-correction program with the source data file completely editable as a UTF-8 text file. With this I can enter in symbols, words and letters like these: (笑) ™ → ↑ ≠ Ă ă ĕ Ĕ ≈ pączki pączek ♥ ♦ ♣ ☉ ♃ ♇ α Α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Η η

Plus now my spelling is corrected even in Notepad. This is limited only by the font you use. Segoe UI is the one I use. It has the broadest range for UTF-8 and looks good. You can use Unifont to display all the characters, but it’s not so attractive.

[durecu]

Thank you White Phoenix.

In fact i suppose Imselby has a French keyboard since he hadn't any problem to input his creole words in his PC.

However a francophone forum made me spot the problem Imselby and I had in common: We were both using an English based text editor (notepad in my case). By downloading a French based text editor (Notepad++ in French), the problem was solved.

Many thanks for your support.

Best regards,

[White Phoenix]

Glad to be of assistance. Now I can mark this thread totally Solved.