Writing aids (namely: spellchecker, thesaurus, hyphenation patterns, grammar checker) for OpenOffice.org can always be improved and streamlined. The best environment for a collaborative effort to create and improve such tools is the local Native-Lang community: you can get work done by people who use and appreciate OOo, and reward the community by making their work available in the following releases. However, a number of issues must be solved to ensure success of such a community project. We will examine some of them, like: the technical expertise needed to build and maintain the single tools and extension packages; the licenses and legal reviews to get tools included in the official builds of OpenOffice.org; the management of roles within the community and effective delegation; the need for readily accessible and easy-to-use interfaces for newcomers who just want to quickly contribute an idea or improvement.

1. OOoCon Budapest 2 September 2010 Improving Writing Aids, the Community Way Andrea Pescetti Italian N-L project Lead

2. Getting Writing Aids Started

4. Thesaurus

5. Hyphenation Patterns

6. Grammar Checker

8. Hunspell dictionaries (suitable for OOo, Thunderbird and more) are available for about 100 languages.

9. http://hunspell.sf.net

11. OOo-specific tool and format, you will usually have to start from scratch.

12. Documentation: OOo project lingucomponent.openoffice.org

14. Format: tool-specific, but conversion from TeX patterns available (with caveats): start based on TeX patterns!

15. TeX Archive: http://ctan.org/

17. Several options available as extensions : LanguageTool, LightProof, CoGrOO and more.

18. Rules for your language: tool-dependent format.

19. Licensing Issues

21. But they are pure data files.

22. FSF: this is “mere aggregation”, licenses do not need to be compatible: issue 65039 .

24. This reinforces the “mere aggregation” concept.

25. Data files within the extension may have different licenses: still “mere aggregation”.

27. GPLv3 : in OOo, no significant differences (mere aggregation).

28. AGPLv3 : usage on a network (WWW) counts as distribution.

30. Usual choice: external contribution, no OCA required.

31. Sun legal was very slow ; but Oracle legal froze the process!

32. Distributed Management

34. Use version control .

35. Expose an easy, web-based, change tracking interface to show differences between revisions.

37. Human readable, except rules.

38. Good for collaborative editing.

40. Human readable.

41. Good for collaborative editing.

43. Format: as arcane as it can get!

44. Changes very rarely.

45. Fix bugs upstream, in TeX.

47. Basic XML knowledge needed.

48. Fix upstream, in LanguageTool.

49. Collaboration possible.

51. It is even possible to automatically generate an updated OXT for every committed change of a file.

52. Keep generated OXT files in the same repository.

54. A packaging manager (or a script!) to generate extensions.

55. A release manager to make stable versions available in OOo.

56. Community Involvement

58. Motivated users, who will benefit directly from their work.

59. Main issue: providing tools that allow to manage contributions in an efficient way.

61. Easy to setup: basic web form or embed in, e.g., Drupal site.

62. Notifications: e-mail to maintainers group, suggestions stored in online database.

63. Web based interface

65. Parameters can be embedded in a URL, users don't have to explicitly open the site.

66. Suitable for inclusion in applications or macros.

69. Nominate for removal from dictionary.

70. Report wrong hyphenation.

72. In use (German) at http://www.openthesaurus.de

73. Can be installed on own server, free software.

74. http://vithesaurus.sf.net

76. It's a plus: the web application can deal with duplicates and it ranks suggestions according to their frequency, for more efficient operation.

78. The web application helps with a “motivated blacklisting”: repeated wrong submissions are handled and a message can be shown to the user.

79. Thanks for attention Andrea Pescetti Italian N-L Project Lead PLIO Board Member pescetti@openoffice.org Image credits: Flickr, PLIO Archives.