[ooo-build] How to set location of dictionary files

[Petr Mladek]

On Thursday 23 July 2009, espinosa_cz wrote:
> Hardcoded stuff. This is not good. Configurability is a virtue for open
> source programs.
> Especially in area where target system can differ.

I agree. I would prefere if it is configurable. It used to be configurable in 
OOo-2.x and Sun developers hardcoded it in OOo-3.x from some strange reasons.

> Is it difficult to make it configurable?
> I'm seriously considering to report it as a bug/enhancement request.

It should not be that hard if you know the related code. Could you please 
report it to the upstream issuezilla, see 
http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html
I think that the upstream bugzilla is a better place because they did the 
implementation.

> What is exactly meant by *external* dictionaries? Are there any non
> external dictionaries?

The word "external" is used in the OOo sources. There are the configure 
options:

	--with-external-dict-dir
	--with-external-hyph-dir
	--with-external-thes-dir

I agree that it is a bit confusing. The non-external dictionaries are 
installed via extensions.

> > I have just enabled it for the Go-oo linux build, so the following
> > OOo-3.1.1 version will search the hunspell/myspell, thesaurus, and hyphen
> > dictionaries in the following directories:
> >
> > 	/usr/share/hunspell
> >         /usr/share/hyphen
> >         /usr/share/mythes
>
> That sounds promising.
>
> Did you pick those directories by yourself?

No, they were defined in the OOo configure as default values. I am not sure 
who defined them.

> Was there any discussion with
> freedesktop.org/LSB/myspell/hunspell/Mozilla teams
> about the naming and structure? I know, symbolic links can help a lot
> here, but it sound
> you are laying down a new linux filesytem standard here.

I am afraid that it wasn't. As I said, it was implemented by the Sun 
developers. I think that you could ask in the bug if you report it.

> Are myspell dictionaries expected to be installed to the same directory?
> There are no hunspell dictionaries in Mandriva, only myspell.

hunspell engine can work well also with the myspell dictionaries. The hunspell 
dictionaries include some extra features (tags) that are recognized and 
supported only by hunspell.

> That sounds fine to me. Providing a nice simple compatibility RPM for
> Mandriva based
> distros sounds even better. There is already one for menus.

Feel free to open another enhancement bug for this. I would suggest to use the 
upstream issuzezilla in this case as well.

> Just out of a curiosity question. How are the dictionaries and OOo settings
> currently in Suse?
> Are you expected to download dictionaries only as  extensions too?

We provide the dictionaries via rpms. They are installed in

/usr/share/myspell
/usr/share/ooo/thesaurus
/usr/share/ooo/hyphen

There was not defined any default in OOo configure when we selected these 
paths. Yes, it would be great to discuss this with other disctributions, 
upstream, ... and create a standard. The problem is that there is not a 
standard way or channel to do such things. Such discussions need time. Every 
distro usually needs a solution quickly... :-(

I hope that we improve the processes in the future.

> Does Suse use same build settings as this go-oo build?

We enable the same features for SUSE and Go-oo. The installation paths, menu 
entries, ... are different. The SUSE build follows the SUSE standarts. The 
Go-oo build takes the default paths from the upstream because both builds 
should work across all distributions.

The world is not ideal but I think that it is slowly improving. It is always a 
compromise to do things perfectly clean or do them fast to make users happy.


Best Regards,
Petr