[Gllug] Anyone using OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 or 2.4.1 on Linux but not Debian?

[John Winters]

I've come across a very odd problem with Debian's build of the
spell-check component of OpenOffice.org (and incidentally
Firefox/Iceweasel).

If you install and use the dictionaries from myspell-en-gb on Debian
Lenny then all sorts of really common words are rejected as invalid in
both OpenOffice.org and Iceweasel (and indeed, in Thunderbird/Icedove -
the word "rejected" is underlined in red as I type this).

I've been doing some investigation and the results are really odd.

1) If you configure the programs to use the en-US dictionaries instead
then the problem goes away (although you obviously then get American
spellings instead of English spellings).  This suggests that the problem
is in the dictionary files.  It's noticeable that the American files
have been re-worked in a big way since the two were forked, and in
particular the American English .aff file is much smaller than the
English English one.

2) If OTOH you install OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 on Windows it comes with
precisely the same en-GB dictionaries (except for one word - "Debian" -
which has been added to the Debian version of the dictionary) and
spell-checking works fine.  This suggests that the dictionaries are OK
and there is a problem with the code.

Obviously these two tests seem to contradict each other.  In the
interest of gathering more information, could someone who is running
OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 or 2.4.1 on Linux, but not Debian Lenny, please
test the following words:

existing
entertained
consisted
persisted

in an OpenOffice.org document (and if available, in Firefox and
Thunderbird).

I'd be very interested to know your results.

TIA,
John
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