Spellchecking in OmegaT 1.8

This (or something similar) will eventually make its way into the user manual. Meanwhile...

1. Click on Options > Spell checking...


2. Indicate where you want OmegaT to look for dictionaries.

This can of course be the directory where OpenOffice.org keeps his.

3. If there are valid dictionaries in that location, OmegaT will recognize them and will display them. If the dictionary you want to use is already there and visible to OmegaT, you're done. If that is not the case, proceed with the following:


4. Click on "Install". This takes a while because OmegaT gets a list of dictionaries from the internet.


5. OmegaT will display a list of dictionaries, click on the dictionaries you want to install (Cmd+click will do multiple selections on Mac, maybe Ctrl+click will do on other platforms).


6. After you have clicked "Install", the button will change of color and OmegaT will get the files from the internet and nothing noticeable will happen for a while. Just wait until the button reverts to its "normal" state.


7. Close.


8. The new dictionaries will be displayed in the dictionary list.


9. To use the dictionaries, make sure the language code of the target files corresponds to the dictionary's language code: an FR-FR dictionary will not work with an FR target setting. You need to change the setting to FR-FR to have the spellchecker recognize the correct dictionary for your target.

You don't have to use that interface to install new dictionaries.

Go to OpenOffice.org's dictionary download page and get the files you want.

Uncompress them in the directory specified in step 2) above.

If OmegaT does not notice them after that install, you can try reloading the project or restarting OmegaT.


Once you have started translating, OmegaT will produce a familiar red wavy underlining for words that are not included in the applied dictionary. A right-click on the word should produce a contextual menu that will display a number of candidates as well as a few options.

People who can't "right-click" because they only have one mouse button can use Command+Click to display the contextual menu. Those of you who have a recent Mighty Mouse from Apple should know that it is quite configurable. Check the System Preferences.

It is also possible to configure some touchpads to simulate a right-click when hitting them with 2 fingers at once. Check your preferences...

OmegaT 1.7.3, 1.8, 1.9...

February was a good month for OmegaT.

Rank is second best with 187 out of 100,000+, after October 2007 (see this post) where it was at 137.

Downloads is also second best with 3,883 packages (everything included), after November 2006 where it was at 4,127.

A few days ago, the latest stable version was released (OmegaT 1.7.3_01). It had been existing as a test version for a while and since there were no major issues with it, it was eventually considered stable.

Making 1.7.3 stable also meant creating a whole new test version. While the developers were busy fixing the most important glitches and adding localizations, work was also done on the last version of OmegaT that will work with Java 1.4: OmegaT 1.8.

OmegaT 1.8 test has been released a few minutes ago ! In fact, Didier had been waiting all this week for the OSX bundled that I had totally forgotten about. Apologies everybody !!!

OmegaT 1.8

Donwload OmegaT 1.8 test for OSX !

Java 1.4 is a thing of the past for most Windows and Linux users. For them, Java 1.6 has been available for a while already. But for Mac, Java 1.5 is still the default in Leopard (10.5) and Tiger (10.4), and Panther (10.3) users are still limited to Java 1.4.

OmegaT 1.8 is bringing quite a few major new features to OmegaT.

First of all, a spellchecker. OmegaT uses the same spellchecker as OpenOffice.org: hunspell. Which also means that it can use all the dictionaries available for OpenOffice.org, and that means quite a lot. Since the manual has not been updated yet to cover this aspect of the setup, you'll have to proceed by trial and error to install your dictionaries, but it is relatively trivial so you should be alright. Don't forget to make sure that the dictionary language code and the project target language code match, otherwise the spellchecker will not realize it is called...

Update! It looks like some OmegaT users have a hard time with the spellchecking setup, so I just wrote a page about that: Spellchecking in OmegaT 1.8.

After the spellchecking, there are quite a few other features that will surely ease your work. Here is a list from the changes.txt file:

• Letter case change in editing field


• Display (all) source segments, so that you don't have to navigate to a segment to see its source, you can have all the source segments displayed at once


• Mark translated segments with a distinguishable background color


• Mark untranslated segments with a distinguishable background color


• Navigation history, so that you can change of segment and come back to the one where you left


• HTML, skip extraction of messages matching regxep


• Select elements to translate in office documents


• Clickable match window, so that you can navigate to a match


• Compare source segment and translated segment lengths


• Indicate translation progress in status bar, mostly the data in the project file window, but available without having to change of window

OmegaT 1.8 does have a few glitches though, some of them I gather, due to the spellchecker interaction with the editing interface. So it should really be considered as a test version. But I have been working with it since the very first days of the spellchecker implementation and I have yet to loose data with it (not that I am particularly anxious to prove the fact that a test version should not be used for real jobs though...)

OmegaT 1.7.3_02

If you check the release notes available in OmegaT 1.8 you'll find that a 1.7.3 release 2 is in the making.

Currently, 1.7.3_02 includes the following:
Enhancements:

• Command line parameters for OmegaT.exe


• Windows installer


• New Arabic localisation (readme, instant start)

Bug fixes:

• PO: Bad handling of plural messages on multiple lines

OmegaT 1.7.3 release 2 is not yet ready. It is still waiting for more localizations and eventual bug fixes. I'll update this page when information comes in.

Regarding OmegaT's first Arabic localization, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Faycal Alami who considered my request for help and gladly contributed his work to the OmegaT Project. I hope we will be able to have a fully localized version of OmegaT in Arabic thanks to his work.

The Arabic localization will only be available in OmegaT 1.8 test for a while, until OmegaT 1.7.3_02 is released.

OmegaT 1.9

Now that OmegaT 1.8 is in testing as the last version of OmegaT that will work in Java 1.4, a lot of work is being accomplished on the next version of OmegaT. Targetting Java 1.5 and probably modifying quite a few important things that we've been used to... OmegaT 1.9 code is now mostly OmegaT 1.8 with a lot of refactoring, to prepare the code for core changes.

I am currently using the new code and am updating it as soon as something seemingly big comes in so I'll let you know what goes on. For people who like to be on the bleeding edge, check the OmegaT Project new SVN repository by typing the following at your command line:

svn co https://omegat.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/omegat omegat

You'll need ant to build the code. There won't be an OSX bundle for 1.9 before a while, so you'll have to do as we used to before the bundle: either double-click on the OmegaT.jar file, or start from the command line.