Softmaker FreeOffice

News, happenings
Message
Author
drblock2
Posts: 153
Joined: Mon 19 Jan 2009, 12:38

freeoffice - strange spell-checker problem

#56 Post by drblock2 »

I did a "custom" stand-alone installation of freeoffice as follows:

I downloaded the "freeoffice.tgz" file and unpacked it to /mnt/home/freeoffice/. The reason for this is that I have a number of Puppy Linux distributions installed and I would like to use freeoffice in all of them, which requires only an installation to the hard disk and a few appropriate symbolic links.

The first time I started Textmaker, it created two folders: /.softmaker and /root/SoftMaker. Since large directories in root fill up the pupsave file, I moved the folders to /mnt/home/freeoffice and created symbolic links back to the expected locations. I installed the German templates next to English (US) templates and erased a lot of localization files that I would never need. (I was careful not to erase anything with "de" in it.) I created a desktop link for Textmaker and everything worked perfectly - except for a peculiar error in the German spell checker.

The German spell checker rejects all words containing one of the German special characters (umlaut ä, ö, ü, etc. and ß), but otherwise seems to operate correctly, even underlining old spellings like "daß" in blue.

Planmaker and Presentations also worked perfectly when launched from the command line, but with the same spell-checker problem.

Insofar as I can offer an clue to the solution of the problem, it seems to me that freeofficeand hunspell are not on the same (code) page, but I have no idea where to change the necessary setting.

SoftMaker Support could not duplicate the problem or suggest a solution.

Further experimentation revealed that this problem does not affect all Puppies.
The spell checker works properly with the following:

Puppy Lucid 5.28 (2.6.33.2)
Slacko Puppy 5.3.2.7 (3.1.10)
Wary Puppy 5.3.90 (2.6.32.59)
The spell-checker error appears with:

PuppyPrecise 5.4 (3.2.29)
Slacko Puppy 5.3.6.5 (3.4.14)
I have not tried this with other localizations that use characters beyond the original ASCII 128, Clearly, this would be a problem for adopting Textmaker as a replacement for abiword, which I would, otherwise, heartily recommend.

Anyone have a suggestion?

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

Re: freeoffice - strange spell-checker problem

#57 Post by jrb »

drblock2 wrote:Further experimentation revealed that this problem does not affect all Puppies.
Since it doesn't affect all Puppies I would guess that something in the built in /usr/bin/hunspell or /usr/share/hunspell is conflicting with FreeOffice. Check in /root/.packages/builtin_files for a complete list of hunspell files.

Try deleting them and see if the problem disappears. On a frugal, CD or USB Puppy you can get them back by deleting /initrd/pup_rw/usr/bin/.wh.hunspell, etc. On a Full install you could move them out of the file system and then copy them back in.

Hope that helps, J

User avatar
greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#58 Post by greengeek »

jakfish wrote:Did you play with the autosave settings instead?
No, I decided that it was ok to leave the autosave setting turned on - because that was ensuring a valid save of the actual data. I figured that turning of the "create backup files" was all that was required so that Textmaker doesn't go comparing my saved data with it's own (potentially) out-of-date .bak copy.
Or perhaps by storing docs on a fat32 partition outside of puppy altogether may make for safer recoveries.
I'm actually storing my real file on a separate ext2 partition. Textmaker was keeping it's .bak files there too. Do you mean that Textmaker may do a better job of comparing the actual file with it's .bak file if the actual file is kept on FAT32? I'm guessing probably not in this case - I think the issue was that puppy had not saved the latest .bak file or else - more likely - that there is a flag somewhere that forces Textmaker to use the .bak file, regardless of whether it is old or new. I dont know why Textmaker would "recover" from a .bak file that had an older timestamp than the actual file though. It would seem more sensible to either reject the older .bak, or else offer some options or sample recoveries to the user.

I will see what happens now with backups turned off.

drblock2
Posts: 153
Joined: Mon 19 Jan 2009, 12:38

German spell checker

#59 Post by drblock2 »

@jrb

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried deleting the native hunspell files, but this did not solve the problem. (I was able to restore them following your instructions - so now I have learned a new trick!)

The odd thing is that only the special characters - ä,ö,ü, ß, etc., are rejected, but the German spell checker works normally otherwise.

I also have a stand-alone installation of Opera 12.13, which uses what appear to be the identical hunspell files (same byte size), but does not have the problem.

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

Re: German spell checker

#60 Post by jrb »

drblock2 wrote:@jrb

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried deleting the native hunspell files, but this did not solve the problem. (I was able to restore them following your instructions - so now I have learned a new trick!)

The odd thing is that only the special characters - ä,ö,ü, ß, etc., are rejected, but the German spell checker works normally otherwise.

I also have a stand-alone installation of Opera 12.13, which uses what appear to be the identical hunspell files (same byte size), but does not have the problem.
Have you tried posting this problem at the Softmaker forum? I can't see them not being interested after all, sie sind Deutsche!

drblock2
Posts: 153
Joined: Mon 19 Jan 2009, 12:38

German spell checker error

#61 Post by drblock2 »

jrb wrote:
Have you tried posting this problem at the Softmaker forum? I can't see them not being interested after all, sie sind Deutsche!
Yes, I did contact SoftMaker, but they were not able to help. Here is the thread:

<http://www.softmaker.com/forum/viewtopi ... 358#p43358>


I pm'ed the support person working on this with the new information and a reference to this thread, but have not heard back.

I checked the libhunspell versions involved. libhunspell-1.2 is used in Pups that have the problem and ones that don't. Precise 5.4.2 has libhunspell-1.3 and the umlaut problem.

The de.aff files in the Opera hunspell (which works flawlessly) and the freeoffice hunspell both list the same code page: SET ISO8859-1

So, I am still stumped.

edit 1: Corrected url of forum thread. Sorry, couldn't get the tags to work.

User avatar
L18L
Posts: 3479
Joined: Sat 19 Jun 2010, 18:56
Location: www.eussenheim.de/

Re: German spell checker error

#62 Post by L18L »

jrb wrote:...I can't see them not being interested after all, sie sind Deutsche!
What about playing with
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=iso-889-1
( or UTF-8 )?
This had been helpful sometimes with similiar issues in puppy.

This works:
http://www.softmaker.com/forum/viewtopi ... 358#p43358 :wink:

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

Re: freeoffice - strange spell-checker problem

#63 Post by jrb »

drblock2 wrote:I did a "custom" stand-alone installation of freeoffice as follows:

I downloaded the "freeoffice.tgz" file and unpacked it to /mnt/home/freeoffice/. The reason for this is that I have a number of Puppy Linux distributions installed and I would like to use freeoffice in all of them, which requires only an installation to the hard disk and a few appropriate symbolic links.

The first time I started Textmaker, it created two folders: /.softmaker and /root/SoftMaker. Since large directories in root fill up the pupsave file, I moved the folders to /mnt/home/freeoffice and created symbolic links back to the expected locations.
Just a thought. You can eliminate the symlinks back to /root by creating a new blank file called portable.txt in /mnt/home/freeoffice. This is Softmaker's way to create a portable version of Freeoffice. As soon as it detects this file it will look in that directory for /.softmaker and /Softmaker. If it doesn't find them there it creates them. It might make a difference?

User avatar
don570
Posts: 5528
Joined: Wed 10 Mar 2010, 19:58
Location: Ontario

#64 Post by don570 »

I downloaded the free version and de-archived in /root
and ran the install script (answering yes to all questions)

Next I installed my Rightclick package
and it worked properly 8)

The .tmd native format seems to have changed from earlier versions???


_______________________________________

drblock2
Posts: 153
Joined: Mon 19 Jan 2009, 12:38

More on German spell-checker problem

#65 Post by drblock2 »

Thanks for the suggestions!

Adding the dummy file portable.txt to the freeoffice directory eliminates the need for the symbolic links. This is a significant improvement as it simplifies the installation of the stand-alone freeoffice, but it does not solve the problem with the German spell checker.

I also tried changing the OUTPUT_CHARSET variable. With Wary 5.4.90, which has the problem, the standard value is UTF-8, I changed this with export (as described above) to ISO8859-1 - the value listed in the de.aff file of the hunspeller. No improvement.

I then tried the opposite tack - I changed the value in de.aff to UTF-8 to match the environmental variable - still no go.

Interestingly, Wary 5.3.90 (with the same kernel as Wary 5.4.90) and the same standard value for the character set works just fine!

jakfish
Posts: 762
Joined: Fri 18 Jul 2008, 19:09

#66 Post by jakfish »

While I've purchased multiple SMs--mostly for phone and PDA--I decided to play with Softmaker 2010 FreeOffice and found it pretty stripped down--no saving in *.docx and no thesaurus, to name two key missing features.

Ashampoo 2010 is also free, and appears to be a full version SoftMaker 2010 (and about 40 mbs larger than FreeOffice). The rub is, it appears to be Windows-only, so you need Wine--though it can be in a stand-alone directory (via a portable install to usb).

I did not find Ashampoo 2010 in Linux format, but if folks are willing to put up with wine, this may alleviate some of the issues noted in this thread, plus return the missing features.

Jake

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

Re: More on German spell-checker problem

#67 Post by jrb »

drblock2 wrote:Interestingly, Wary 5.3.90 (with the same kernel as Wary 5.4.90) and the same standard value for the character set works just fine!
I couldn't find Wary 5.3.90 so I used Wary 5.3.92, hopefully that one works for you. I took it and extracted all the files that were modified in Wary 5.4.90. That is, here are the original files from the working version that were changed in the non-working version (except those in /dev). The files are in the directory structure, no symlinks though.

I am thinking you could copy these files in to Wary 5.4.90 and see if this results in a working version. Then you could start over copying in one folder at a time, until you identify the problem folder. Then start over and copy in one file at a time until you identify the problem file.

I've used this technique a few times to identify problems and although tedious :cry: it works.:D

Cheers, J

User avatar
tuxtoo
Posts: 173
Joined: Tue 14 Dec 2010, 19:45
Location: Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, UK
Contact:

SoftMaker-Free-Office-2012.pet

#68 Post by tuxtoo »

I have packaged SM Free Office 2012 and tried it on Puppy-412 and Saluki-023, although not extensively. It can be downloaded from http://412collection.co.uk/document.php#smo2012
Puppy Linux search engine.

[b][url]http://wellminded.net63.net/[/url][/b] Suitable for older browsers.

Mirror [b][url]https://puppysearch.neocities.org[/url][/b]

musher0
Posts: 14629
Joined: Mon 05 Jan 2009, 00:54
Location: Gatineau (Qc), Canada

Re: SoftMaker-Free-Office-2012.pet

#69 Post by musher0 »

tuxtoo wrote:I have packaged SM Free Office 2012 and tried it on Puppy-412 and Saluki-023, although not extensively. It can be downloaded from http://412collection.co.uk/document.php#smo2012
Hello, tuxtoo.

Many thanks for this, and also for your Puppy 4.12 site.

Best regards.

musher0
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

jakfish
Posts: 762
Joined: Fri 18 Jul 2008, 19:09

#70 Post by jakfish »

This week, SoftMaker is heavily discounting its full-version SoftMaker 2012, Linux or Windows.

I picked mine up on Monday for $19.99 USD. Since I run Wine, I got the Windows version. My real issue with SM in Linux is an un-adjustable menu font, etc since it's all pretty hard-coded. With Wine, obviously, users get more to tweak.

Jake

User avatar
tuxtoo
Posts: 173
Joined: Tue 14 Dec 2010, 19:45
Location: Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, UK
Contact:

Re: SoftMaker-Free-Office-2012.pet

#71 Post by tuxtoo »

Hello musher0

Thanks for the feedback and glad you like 412collection.co.uk
Puppy Linux search engine.

[b][url]http://wellminded.net63.net/[/url][/b] Suitable for older browsers.

Mirror [b][url]https://puppysearch.neocities.org[/url][/b]

User avatar
vicmz
Posts: 1262
Joined: Sun 15 Jan 2012, 22:47

#72 Post by vicmz »

To anyone interested, an SFS of FreeOffice is available here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=85713
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=76948]Puppy Linux en español[/url]

Dewbie

#73 Post by Dewbie »

BarryK wrote:
I would like you guys feedback on FreeOffice. I am in contact with someone at Softmaker, and there is the possibility of compiling FreeOffice optimised for Puppy, and including it in an official release of Puppy.

So, I would like to get feedback from users of FreeOffice!
Not a good idea in the long run.
At best, should only be packaged as a .pet.

When SoftMaker introduces newer versions, they stop issuing license keys for older ones.
(See top of my first post here.)

User avatar
puppyiso
Posts: 594
Joined: Tue 13 Jan 2009, 02:27

#74 Post by puppyiso »

hopefully,

I mean HOPEFULLY,

they support Korean letters.

I remember it didn't work properly.

Yes, Korea is a damn small country. They just make Hyundais and Samsung phones.

But it would be nice of them if they EVER consider supporting Korean 2 letter system correctly.

User avatar
mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#75 Post by mikeb »

perhaps PuppyISO you could approach softmaker as a software tester or even provide translations for korean ... seriously.... they are a small company so can only work with the resources to hand...
A bit like puppy really....
mike

Post Reply