No spellcheck in OpenOffice 3?
I was typing up a document today in OpenOffice Writer, version 3, and noticed there were no little red squiggly spellcheck lines beneath random words, as it was in the past. Weird… I had thought this was working. I then intentionally misspelled some words to see if it would catch them. Nope.
To make matters worse, I forced a spellcheck via the menus (Tools -> Spelling and Grammar…) and immediately a window popped up over the regular Spelling and Grammar window which said, “The spellcheck is complete.” SAYS WHO??? Those misspelled words were still there, staring me and Writer both in the face, just screaming for a squiggly red line to be put under them and a list of suggested alternatives to be made available.
Back to trusty Google again. This time, it turns out that in Version 3 of OpenOffice, Spellcheck has been re-worked into an Extensions model, much like how FireFox handles all its little add-ons. Why didn’t they tell the guys at Gentoo Linux that? Shouldn’t this be automatically included at installation time? This totally disobeys the LINGUAS=”…” setting in my /etc/make.conf.
So… the solution to an arrogant, know-it-all Spellcheck in OpenOffice 3 is to locate and install a Dictionary extension for the language you want. I found the US English Spellcheck Dictionary I was looking for, downloaded the .oxt file, and opened it in Writer just as if it was any old text document. Upon opening, Writer recognized it as an extension file and gave me a handful of easy prompts to work through in order to install it.
Hmmm… upon writing up this article, I did a search again and also found a US English Names Dictionary. Cool! Now I don’t have to deal with squiggly lines under everyone’s names too. Thanks OpenOffice! 
-Curtis
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