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Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:57:22 +0200
From: Andre Fischer <af@a-w-f.de>
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To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [RELEASE][3.4.1]: Include only one en-US dictionary extension
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On 20.06.2012 17:39, Stuart Swales wrote:
> On 20/06/2012 10:28, Andre Fischer wrote:
>> On 19.06.2012 18:37, Stuart Swales wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Please don't merrily discard the English language variant dictionaries -
>>> they are really really important.
>>
>> The reason for wanting to drop some of the english extensions is not a
>> disregard for (of?) the english language and its variants.  In older
>> versions of OpenOffice only the dict-en extension was included.  It is
>> probably my fault that there are now five dictionary extensions.
>>
>> I added the functionality for downloading and integrating the extensions
>> into the installation sets and used the information on [1] to setup the
>> initial list of extensions to bundle.  Maybe the time has come to reduce
>> that list to what is really needed.
>>
>> dict-en seems to support the variants (AU,CA,GB,US,ZA).  I say "seems"
>> because I am neither a linguist nor do I have information beyond what
>> the pages in the extension repository provide (see links to english
>> dictionaries on [1]).  I don't know if the separate dictionaries for
>> AU,NZ,CA, and US contain anything that is not already included in dict-en.
>>
>> If you or anybody else have/has more information then please share that
>> with the rest of us so that we can make a decision based on facts
>> whether to keep or to drop the extensions.
>>
>> -Andre
>>
>>
>> [1]
>> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Bundled+Writing+Aids
>
> I can only really speak for en_GB here - David Bartlett put in a lot of
> work to get a usable British English dictionary going in the early days
> of OpenOffice.org and life was made much easier once that was
> incorporated into the main build.  Obviously 95% or so of the word list
> will be common across the English language variants but the 5% or so
> that does differ matters greatly to 'natives'.  British English spelling
> does vary trivially but significantly from US English spelling.  We have
> important users over here including universities, a national newspaper,
> city councils...
>
> If we were to kick out all non-en_US variants from the core build

Please read what I wrote above.  It is the dict-en.oxt dictionary that I 
would like to keep, not en_US.oxt.  dict-en.oxt is, as far as I know the 
only one that HAS support for GB.

By the way, the upcoming 3.4.1 release will have a separate GB version. 
  This will have British English strings not only in the dictionary but 
also in the UI.

Also by the way, we have yet to decide on the set of extensions 
(dictionaries and others) included in the GB version of AOO.  Now would 
be the right time to make a wish.  I nobody speaks up, it will be 
shipped without any dictionaries.

-Andre

> then I
> guess users here would be surprised at the regression.  They would have
> to figure out how to find and download the appropriate extension, which
> I think could be beyond a fair proportion of them, leading to gripes
> about Apache OpenOffice 'not being as good as the old one'.
>
> My 2p.
>
> - Stuart Swales
>
>