David Naylor: Blog

Photography, Browsers and Stuff.

Back in September of 2005 I was moaning about how the spell checker in OpenOffice sucks. Sadly, it hasn’t improved since then.

Heck, Firefox has a much better spell checker for its text fields.

I have to moan some more about this expensive software:

There is no simple way of binding a certain character to a keyboard shortcut. You have to record a macro which inserts the character, and then edit the macro with a text editor so that it works independent of which font you happen to be using. Finally, you bind the macro to a keyboard shortcut.
The upgrade process is awful! Why are all my settings obliterated when I install a new version? Obviously, this really puts me off upgrading. I could live with there being no binary update, but I would like it if I could at least install a point upgrade without losing all my settings and dictionaries.
Page numbering anyone? Could it be more complicated and non-intuitive?

Anonymous says:

January 24, 2007 at 11:00

Firefox uses Openoffice.org’s spellchecker. I don’t imagine they had time to make extensive changes. Personally, I like the spellchecker – it does a better job for spelling mistakes than MS Office in my experience.
David Naylor says:

January 24, 2007 at 11:03

The difference is that in Firefox the spellchecker just works. Have you tried changing the document language in Openoffice? Have you tried installing new dictionaries? It’s hopelessly awkward.