I am not sure why this is being discussed.
See https://hunspell.github.io/
I recently came across something that Firefox and Open office were set to share 
their spell checker.
That would be nice.

Howard
_______________________________________________________________________
I have examined some of the materials available for the CSAPI.

Here are my initial observations:

1. The CSAPI is closely-held by Microsoft.  It is evidently not part of their 
Open Specifications set.

2. Apparently a license agreement is required in order to have the necessary 
materials and also learn of any maintenance/change to the API over time.

3. The implementation is via a DLL that can be registered on Microsoft Windows 
and thereby relied upon by Microsoft Office products that will use the CSAPI to 
access a spell-checker for a given language.

CONCLUSION

To provide implementations of such DLLs at Apache OpenOffice, these would 
require a development offered as open source under the Apache License. This 
would, by the way, probably impair the use of spelling lexicons that are 
provided under incompatible licenses and probably unwelcome at Microsoft.

It seems to me that the closely-held nature of the CSAPI and requirement for 
license agreements is completely out of scope for Apache OpenOffice and not 
compatible with policies of the Apache Software Foundation.  This is simply a 
road we cannot go down.  

I suggest that we not go any farther investigating this proposal unless those 
encumbrances disappear.

- Dennis

PS: A third party could engage with Microsoft and supply a CSAPI-accepting 
implementation.  That might employ the same tools that AOO employs for 
processing supplied lexicons.  The third party would have to navigate the 
licenses on such lexicons as well and ensure that this does not introduce any 
licensing condition that is unacceptable to Microsoft.  The independent third 
party also might not be so opposed to empowering the use of CSAPI-delivered 
spelling checkers by Microsoft products as I imagine the contributors of 
lexicons to AOO might be.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alexey Zhuravliov [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2016 02:46
> To: Rory O'Farrell <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL][API][WINDOWS]Whether Common Spelling API can be
> implemented
> 
> Hello Rory,
> 
> Wednesday, May 25, 2016, 9:27:48 PM, you wrote:
> 
> >> DEH>> Please provide more information about the Common Spelling API
> 
> ROF> Unless this does something dramatically different and improved
> ROF> from the existing spelling system, the English dictionary of
> ROF> which is very well serviced by Marcus, I suggest that, on the "If
> ROF> it's not broke don't fix it" principle we should leave the spelling
> system alone.
> 
> This  could  be  new  and useful feature when other programs could use
> AOO's  spell  checking  engine. If MS's API can't be implemented maybe
> AOO developers can create a new interface.
> 
> >> >>> Can  Common Spelling API (which was in MS Office up to version
> 2000 as
> >> >>> far  as  I know) be implemented in AOO on Windows.
> --
> Best regards,
> Alexey Zhuravliov
> 
> 
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