NewsForge: Hacking OpenOffice.org Dictionaries

“Like many features in free and open source software,
OpenOffice.org’s spellcheck, hyphenation, and thesaurus
dictionaries are based on code from earlier projects. You can learn
the basics about them from the Lingucomponent Project, but detailed
information is difficult to find. Thanks to an email message from a
reader and a discussion on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists, I
realized that no one had prepared instructions on how to edit the
dictionaries. I began to investigate, using nothing but a file
editor and persistence. The investigation was a mixed success, but
I did learn enough to make some basic hacks and to note where more
advanced methods were needed…”

Complete
Story