Bug 36695 - Request for a "smart" link between thesaurus and spell checking
Summary: Request for a "smart" link between thesaurus and spell checking
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Linguistic (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.3.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Thesaurus
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Reported: 2011-04-29 13:55 UTC by gleppert
Modified: 2017-02-04 11:16 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Description gleppert 2011-04-29 13:55:11 UTC
Introduction: In LibreOffice spell checking and thesaurus are insufficiently linked, which leads to the perception that LibreOffice spell check is insufficient. This problem can be easily solved: Therefore, this bug is marked as [EasyHack]

Problem description:
1. Language dictionaries for spell checking generally contain official and not-very-colloquial words. That's okay, so far.
2. The thesaurus additionally also includes many words which are colloquial and non-official. That's okay, too.
3. However, if the user writes a colloquial word in a document (which is in the thesaurus), spell check will not find it and therefore will underline it in red. If the user then just performs a right mouse click on the word, he/she will usually get offered quite useless alternative words which do not really fit. The user does NOT see that the inbuilt thesaurus knows the word and could actually offer much better alternatives. The user just thinks that LibreOffice does not know this word, which is wrong.

Proposal: If the spell check does not know a particular word, but the thesaurus knows it, LibreOffice should include the note "The thesaurus offers alternatives to this word" as first entry of the proposed alternative words after performing a right mouse click on the red underlined word.
Comment 1 Jeff Aigner 2011-06-07 21:38:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> Introduction: In LibreOffice spell checking and thesaurus are insufficiently
> linked, which leads to the perception that LibreOffice spell check is
> insufficient. This problem can be easily solved: Therefore, this bug is marked
> as [EasyHack]
> 
> Problem description:
> 1. Language dictionaries for spell checking generally contain official and
> not-very-colloquial words. That's okay, so far.
> 2. The thesaurus additionally also includes many words which are colloquial and
> non-official. That's okay, too.
> 3. However, if the user writes a colloquial word in a document (which is in the
> thesaurus), spell check will not find it and therefore will underline it in
> red. If the user then just performs a right mouse click on the word, he/she
> will usually get offered quite useless alternative words which do not really
> fit. The user does NOT see that the inbuilt thesaurus knows the word and could
> actually offer much better alternatives. The user just thinks that LibreOffice
> does not know this word, which is wrong.
> 
> Proposal: If the spell check does not know a particular word, but the thesaurus
> knows it, LibreOffice should include the note "The thesaurus offers
> alternatives to this word" as first entry of the proposed alternative words
> after performing a right mouse click on the red underlined word.

Do you have any examples of words for which this happens?
Comment 2 gleppert 2011-06-08 01:10:37 UTC
Jeff, thanks for your reply. 

Yes, there are thousands of examples. Here is one in German language:

"vermorscht" (colloquial) is a synonym for "morsch"

The German dictionary does not know "vermorscht", because it is a colloquial word. Therefore, the word will be red underlined. If you perform the right mouse click you see only useless proposed words. None of these words actually fit. 
The user cannot see that the Thesaurus includes both words: "morsch" and "vermorscht". If this would be actually possible, it would help many users a lot!

(I used following preinstalled dictionary/thesaurus: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/de/project/dict-de_DE_frami)
Comment 3 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 12:02:51 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 manj_k 2011-12-24 06:16:20 UTC
Still not integrated in LibO 3.5.0 Beta2,
it would be nice to have such a feature ... ;)

Moving back to NEW from NEEDINFO again.
Comment 5 Urmas 2012-02-21 08:12:59 UTC
If a word isn't found in spelling dictionary, it cannot be stemmed and analysed to put its synonyms in the same form. It's rather useless feature for flective languages.
Comment 6 Olivier R. 2012-02-21 08:43:29 UTC
This shouldn’t be done by design.
That would be a memory waste to do what the spellchecker already does.

And thesaurus may include words which are not desirable in dictionaries.

It’s up to the dictionaries maintainers to include words from thesaurus in Hunspell dictionaries.

Ask to your’s to include colloquial words.
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries/tree/dictionaries/de

NOTOURBUG, I think.
Comment 7 gleppert 2012-02-22 07:36:19 UTC
@Olivier: Thank you for your comment to this request for enhancement. However, I think you have wrongly understood the idea of the request:

I describe it from the writer's perspective:

People write their texts and realize that some words are red underlined by the spell checker, e.g. colloquial words. 

As you rightfully said, the spell checker does not know this word (and never should know it), but the spell checker also does not provide a useful alternative when right-clicking on the red underlined word.

In this case, the thesauruses often also include these colloquial words and could give a good alternative word to the user. The idea here is to show to the user that LibreOffice knows this word (because it's in the thesaurus) and in this way helps the user to find a correct word.
Comment 8 Olivier R. 2012-02-22 08:27:12 UTC
Yes, sorry. I misunderstood at first.

But colloquial words should probably be included in spellcheking dictionaries.
What you are asking can also be done by the grammar checker.
I wonder if it is the proper role of the the thesaurus to do what you are suggesting.
Comment 9 gleppert 2012-07-27 20:35:10 UTC
@Olivier: Most LibreOffice thesaurus are developed in a community way (see openthesaurus.de) and they include lots of colloquial or dialect words you don't want to have in a spell check dictionary. 

However, many people use these words in their documents. LibreOffice should red underline these words AND indicating at the same time that there are better alternatives/synonmys available.
Comment 10 Urmas 2012-07-31 04:11:27 UTC
The question is: how do you suggest to find a base form of the word if it is unknown? If it has -n, -s, -er or something else appended to it, it will not be found in a thesaurus.