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Posted to users@openoffice.apache.org by DCollins <dc...@davesbrain.ca> on 2019/09/17 23:48:14 UTC

dictionary fails to find obvious typos

I happened to run an .odt document through another spell checker and it 
turned up a couple of clear typos that Open Office did not catch.

I've pared the doc down to just a few dozen words and pasted them into a 
fresh doc to rule out any potential weirdness in my original doc, and it 
still doesn't recognize them.

This passage has two glaring typos that Open Office does not flag (even 
Thunderbird recognized them when I pasted them):


convert business goals and technical specifications into engaging 
porductivity enhancing applications.

helping the people they serve get their needs met with beautiful, 
intuitve and usable tools.


These are not words I've manually added to the dictionary.

I notice that if I type just the two words directly into a fresh doc 
with nothing else, OpenOffice does recognize them. But copying the above 
text into a fresh doc, it will not flag them in the spell checker.

This is alarming, especially since this is excerpted from a cover letter 
I've been sending out for job applications.

Thoughts?

Wasn't sure where else to start but the user list. Should I send it to 
the dev list?

Dave



Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by Nancy Shiffrin <ns...@earthlink.net>.
you can't get out of proofreading for yourself with your own eyes -- 
also it's really good to get others to proofread for you -- every time I 
think I've caught everything my husband finds one more for me AI doesn't 
excuse you from thought


-- 
FLIGHT new poems forthcoming from Finishing Line Press
Christen Kincaid <fl...@aol.com>

October 12, 2019 4:00
Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd.
Reading with RD Armstrong and the Lummox Gang
poetraindog@gmail.com for info

THE VAST UNKNOWING poems Infinity Publishing
http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8138-3
https://awritersbusiness.com/blog-2/2019/5/29/6x6ylozrenr6n4e8w2bwisl93kh6gq

GAME WITH VARIATIONS love poems forthcoming from WordTech

OUT OF THE GARDEN/INVOKING ANAIS NIN novella and essay
ALLISON'S WAR script
MY JEWISH NAME essays
TOWARDS WHOLENESS reviews and articles
POETS and POETRY reviews and articles
review copies of all books available as pdf file nshiffrin@earthlink.net

Nancy Shiffrin 1112 Montana Avenue #636
Santa Monica, CA 90403 310.463.6722

donate
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DF2UBLPFY7S3S

"There are no writer's blocks, only secrets we're afraid of telling".
Anais Nin



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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by "W. Robert J. Funnell, Prof." <ro...@mcgill.ca>.
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019, DCollins wrote:

> I happened to run an .odt document through another spell checker and it 
> turned up a couple of clear typos that Open Office did not catch.
> ...
> I notice that if I type just the two words directly into a fresh doc with 
> nothing else, OpenOffice does recognize them. But copying the above text into 
> a fresh doc, it will not flag them in the spell checker.
> ...

Maybe your style has the language set incorrectly? What happens if you 
do Paste Special and paste the text as Unformatted? Are the errors 
flagged then?

- Robert


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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by Brian Barker <b....@btinternet.com.INVALID>.
At 19:48 17/09/2019 -0400, Dave Collins wrote:
>I happened to run an .odt document through another spell checker and 
>it turned up a couple of clear typos that Open Office did not catch. 
>I've pared the doc down to just a few dozen words and pasted them 
>into a fresh doc to rule out any potential weirdness in my original 
>doc, and it still doesn't recognize them. This passage has two 
>glaring typos that Open Office does not flag (even Thunderbird 
>recognized them when I pasted them):
>convert business goals and technical specifications into engaging 
>porductivity enhancing applications.
>helping the people they serve get their needs met with beautiful, 
>intuitve and usable tools.
>
>These are not words I've manually added to the dictionary. I notice 
>that if I type just the two words directly into a fresh doc with 
>nothing else, OpenOffice does recognize them. But copying the above 
>text into a fresh doc, it will not flag them in the spell checker. 
>This is alarming, especially since this is excerpted from a cover 
>letter I've been sending out for job applications.

It's not alarming if you know what is happening. The (pseudo-)words 
"porductivity" and "intuitve" are both flagged as misspellings in all 
the varieties of English for which spelling dictionaries are 
installed by default with the English versions of OpenOffice 
(including "English (Canada)"). But they will not be so marked if the 
language you have set for them is something for which you do not have 
a spelling dictionary installed. This might be another variety of 
English or indeed another language altogether. And that will also be 
true if you have marked the text language as None - asking for 
spelling of that particular text not to be checked, that is.

Put the cursor into the relevant text and look in the middle of the 
Status Bar (at the foot of the OpenOffice window). There you will see 
the rogue language that you have apparently set.

If you type the words into a new document, the language set will be 
your default language (possibly English (Canada)?), so the 
misspellings will be recognised - exactly as you say. And note that 
if you copy text using the default method, the language property of 
the text may be carried over and pasted with the text, again 
producing exactly the effect that you describe. As someone has 
already explained, if you wish to paste text without carrying over a 
potentially inappropriate language setting, use Edit | Paste 
Special... (or right-click | Paste Special...) instead of ordinary 
Paste, selecting "Unformatted text" in the Paste Special dialogue. It 
will then inherit the language of surrounding text.

>Wasn't sure where else to start but the user list.

Where could be better?

>Should I send it to the dev list?

Not unless you want to embarrass yourself.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by Nancy Shiffrin <ns...@earthlink.net>.
I'm a writer. I have office 4.1.6 now. I work with spellcheck enabled. 
Even so, I don't catch every typo. There's nothing like proofreading 
with your own eyes and hands and brain.  This comes at the end of a 
project, after everything is in.

On 9/17/2019 4:53 PM, David Belina wrote:
> My version of
> OpenOffice (4.1.6) flags both of the mis-spelled words and suggests the proper spelling.  Srock install/update of OpenOffice to the latest version).
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> On September 17, 2019 at 5:49:19 PM, DCollins (dcinc@davesbrain.ca) wrote:
> 
> helping the people they serve get their needs met with beautiful,
> intuitve and usable tools.
> 

-- 
FLIGHT new poems forthcoming from Finishing Line Press
Christen Kincaid <fl...@aol.com>

October 12, 2019 4:00
Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd.
Reading with RD Armstrong and the Lummox Gang
poetraindog@gmail.com for info

THE VAST UNKNOWING poems Infinity Publishing
http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8138-3
https://awritersbusiness.com/blog-2/2019/5/29/6x6ylozrenr6n4e8w2bwisl93kh6gq

GAME WITH VARIATIONS love poems forthcoming from WordTech

OUT OF THE GARDEN/INVOKING ANAIS NIN novella and essay
ALLISON'S WAR script
MY JEWISH NAME essays
TOWARDS WHOLENESS reviews and articles
POETS and POETRY reviews and articles
review copies of all books available as pdf file nshiffrin@earthlink.net

Nancy Shiffrin 1112 Montana Avenue #636
Santa Monica, CA 90403 310.463.6722

donate
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DF2UBLPFY7S3S

"There are no writer's blocks, only secrets we're afraid of telling".
Anais Nin



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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by David Belina <db...@comcast.net>.
My version of 
OpenOffice (4.1.6) flags both of the mis-spelled words and suggests the proper spelling.  Srock install/update of OpenOffice to the latest version).

Dave


On September 17, 2019 at 5:49:19 PM, DCollins (dcinc@davesbrain.ca) wrote:

helping the people they serve get their needs met with beautiful, 
intuitve and usable tools. 

Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by Brian Barker <b....@btinternet.com.INVALID>.
At 12:09 18/09/2019 -0400, Dave Collins wrote:
>Thanks. The language was the problem. I didn't realize that it 
>defaulted to 'unknown' ...

I don't think it does. Indeed, I can see how to set the language to 
"[None]" in OpenOffice, but not to "Unknown". So I'm guessing that 
you originally pasted this text into an OpenOffice document from some 
other application. As previously explained, this will, by default, 
carry over some properties, including not only language but also 
font, font size, font colour, etc. The designers must have thought 
that this was generally useful; I think I agree. You can avoid it by 
using Paste Special or by resetting the properties afterwards. (If 
you are not familiar with Paste Special, I strongly recommend becoming so.)

If you type fresh text, it should - depending on context - take on 
either the language marked for the surrounding text or else your 
default language, as set at Tools | Options... | Language Settings | 
Languages | Default languages for documents.

>... (what does that do? Is it able to find some errors? Or none? < 
>rhetorical question).

The [None] language setting in OpenOffice disables spelling checking 
(as well as thesaurus use) for that text. This can be useful to 
prevent false positives if you have text that doesn't follow the 
general language of your document - perhaps a quotation in another 
language for which you do not have a spelling dictionary installed, 
or from Shakespeare in the original spellings, mathematical formulae, 
or whatever.

>A few usability issues there.

But not, I suggest, when you have fully learned to use the product.

>Once I set it to English it found them. Noted for future reference.

Good-oh!

Brian Barker  


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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by Brian Barker <b....@btinternet.com.INVALID>.
At 13:00 18/09/2019 -0400, Dave Collins wrote:
>>>A few usability issues there.
>>
>>But not, I suggest, when you have fully learned to use the product.
>
>True. Although part of the definition of usability is that a 
>product's basic features should support new users.

Agreed. But users do need to be prepared to learn. Chapter 3 of the 
Writer Guide explains that normal pasting means that "pasted text 
keeps its original formatting (such as bold or italics)" and explains 
how to use Paste Special to avoid this - though it doesn't mention 
font, font size, font colour, or indeed language. And this behaviour 
is common in other office suites.

If you think that the benefits of Paste Special are insufficiently 
trumpeted, then I'm right behind you. When appropriate, my fingers 
naturally fall on Ctrl+Shift+V.

Brian Barker  


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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by DCollins <dc...@davesbrain.ca>.
 > I can see how to set the language to "[None]" in OpenOffice, but not 
to "Unknown".

Indeed. I am not able to set it back to unknown now that I've changed it.

 > I'm guessing that you originally pasted this text into an OpenOffice 
document from some other application.

This is surely what happened. The original was either Notepad or Wordpad 
- neither of which have language features.

 >> A few usability issues there.
 > But not, I suggest, when you have fully learned to use the product.

True. Although part of the definition of usability is that a product's 
basic features should support new users.

D.


On 2019-09-18 12:38 p.m., Brian Barker wrote:
> At 12:09 18/09/2019 -0400, Dave Collins wrote:
>> Thanks. The language was the problem. I didn't realize that it 
>> defaulted to 'unknown' ...
>
> I don't think it does. Indeed, I can see how to set the language to 
> "[None]" in OpenOffice, but not to "Unknown". So I'm guessing that you 
> originally pasted this text into an OpenOffice document from some 
> other application. As previously explained, this will, by default, 
> carry over some properties, including not only language but also font, 
> font size, font colour, etc. The designers must have thought that this 
> was generally useful; I think I agree. You can avoid it by using Paste 
> Special or by resetting the properties afterwards. (If you are not 
> familiar with Paste Special, I strongly recommend becoming so.)
>
> If you type fresh text, it should - depending on context - take on 
> either the language marked for the surrounding text or else your 
> default language, as set at Tools | Options... | Language Settings | 
> Languages | Default languages for documents.
>
>> ... (what does that do? Is it able to find some errors? Or none? < 
>> rhetorical question).
>
> The [None] language setting in OpenOffice disables spelling checking 
> (as well as thesaurus use) for that text. This can be useful to 
> prevent false positives if you have text that doesn't follow the 
> general language of your document - perhaps a quotation in another 
> language for which you do not have a spelling dictionary installed, or 
> from Shakespeare in the original spellings, mathematical formulae, or 
> whatever.
>
>> A few usability issues there.
>
> But not, I suggest, when you have fully learned to use the product.
>
>> Once I set it to English it found them. Noted for future reference.
>
> Good-oh!
>
> Brian Barker
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@openoffice.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@openoffice.apache.org
>
>

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Re: dictionary fails to find obvious typos

Posted by DCollins <dc...@davesbrain.ca>.
Thanks. The language was the problem. I didn't realize that it defaulted 
to 'unknown' (what does that do? Is it able to find some errors? Or 
none? < rhetorical question). A few usability issues there.

Once I set it to English it found them. Noted for future reference.

Dave Collins


On 2019-09-17 9:56 p.m., Brian Barker wrote:
> At 19:48 17/09/2019 -0400, Dave Collins wrote:
>> I happened to run an .odt document through another spell checker and 
>> it turned up a couple of clear typos that Open Office did not catch. 
>> I've pared the doc down to just a few dozen words and pasted them 
>> into a fresh doc to rule out any potential weirdness in my original 
>> doc, and it still doesn't recognize them. This passage has two 
>> glaring typos that Open Office does not flag (even Thunderbird 
>> recognized them when I pasted them):
>> convert business goals and technical specifications into engaging 
>> porductivity enhancing applications.
>> helping the people they serve get their needs met with beautiful, 
>> intuitve and usable tools.
>>
>> These are not words I've manually added to the dictionary. I notice 
>> that if I type just the two words directly into a fresh doc with 
>> nothing else, OpenOffice does recognize them. But copying the above 
>> text into a fresh doc, it will not flag them in the spell checker. 
>> This is alarming, especially since this is excerpted from a cover 
>> letter I've been sending out for job applications.
>
> It's not alarming if you know what is happening. The (pseudo-)words 
> "porductivity" and "intuitve" are both flagged as misspellings in all 
> the varieties of English for which spelling dictionaries are installed 
> by default with the English versions of OpenOffice (including "English 
> (Canada)"). But they will not be so marked if the language you have 
> set for them is something for which you do not have a spelling 
> dictionary installed. This might be another variety of English or 
> indeed another language altogether. And that will also be true if you 
> have marked the text language as None - asking for spelling of that 
> particular text not to be checked, that is.
>
> Put the cursor into the relevant text and look in the middle of the 
> Status Bar (at the foot of the OpenOffice window). There you will see 
> the rogue language that you have apparently set.
>
> If you type the words into a new document, the language set will be 
> your default language (possibly English (Canada)?), so the 
> misspellings will be recognised - exactly as you say. And note that if 
> you copy text using the default method, the language property of the 
> text may be carried over and pasted with the text, again producing 
> exactly the effect that you describe. As someone has already 
> explained, if you wish to paste text without carrying over a 
> potentially inappropriate language setting, use Edit | Paste 
> Special... (or right-click | Paste Special...) instead of ordinary 
> Paste, selecting "Unformatted text" in the Paste Special dialogue. It 
> will then inherit the language of surrounding text.
>
>> Wasn't sure where else to start but the user list.
>
> Where could be better?
>
>> Should I send it to the dev list?
>
> Not unless you want to embarrass yourself.
>
> I trust this helps.
>
> Brian Barker
>
>

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