Divvun spelling checkers for LibreOffice 4 on Windows 8

The Divvun group has in cooperation with the Voikko project and the Hfst team developed a new serie of spelling checkers for LibreOffice. All source code for the spelling checkers is completely open, both the linguistic and the technical. In the long run this spelling checker will be integrated into other systems and applications.

Install the spellchecker

Note
These installation instructions are written for the Divvun spelling checkers produced with Voikko and Hfst for LibreOffice.org 4.1+. There is a separate installation instruction for Divvun built for Hunspell when used with LibreOffice 3.x and OpenOffice.org 2.x.

Sami (and other) spelling checkers for LibreOffice can be downloaded here. The downloaded spellchecker extension looks like this (the name may vary):
Bilde av LibreOffice-voikko-tillegget

Depending on your browser and system, the downloaded file will either be automatically opened by LibreOffice or saved to disk. If it is saved, double click it to install the extension.

LibreOffice will start and install the spelling checker. You will get a question whether you want to install it. Click «Ok» to install it:
Dialog for å sjekke om man vil installere tillegget.

When it is installed, a window like the one below will show up. In the picture below, the new speller extension is selected and highlighted in blue. You can click on the button "Innstillingar …" to see what languages are available in the speller. Click «Lukk» to end the installation.
Resultatet av installasjonen.

How to use the spelling checker

Windows users
If the input method and language are configured as recommended in Windows 8.1, the spell checker language will follow the keyboard (input) language automatically. If so, the instructions below are superfluous. Just switch input method: English keyboard layout when writing in English, North Sámi keyboard when writing in North Sámi, etc. The speller language will switch together with the keyboard layout!

To turn on the Divvn spell checker for North Sámi, do as follows:

  • Click the fourth field from the left in the status bar, and then click «More …»:
    Språkmeny
  • Choose the Font tab in the dialog window and choose the language you want (North Sámi in our case) from the popup language menu:
    Skriftdialog
    For languages not registered with LO, you can still use the spelling checker: instead of selecting the language in the pop-up menu, you type in the ISO 639-3 code for your speller language, possibly followed by a hyphen and the ISO 3166 country code for where the language is used. We haven't found a system for when you need the country code or not - you just need to try both.
  • Now you can right click the misspelled word and get correction suggestions (the "word" nuvviDspeller will generate suggestions telling you what version you have of the Divvun spell checker):
    Velg språk for stavekontroll
  • If the above is not enough and you get no red lines under misspellings, then do the following: Open Preferences > Language Preferences > Writing Aids and click OK. Now the spell checking should start.