Having completed the TagCleaner, so I could clean HTML output from OpenOffice, I noticed I still hadn’t gotten around getting the Dutch spell-checker to work under SuSe Linux. In complexity of configuration OpenOffice sometimes matches commercial office suites… sigh. Documentation exists, but it is a bit hard to find, it took me half an hour to get to it.

These are the steps (for OpenOffice 1.02):

• go to yast, and install myspell-dutch (or your own language instead of dutch :-)). Installing the package updates your open office dictionary configuration file (dictionary.lst) automatically.
• add the dutch dictionary (and hyphenation list if you want to) by going to Tools->Options->Language->writing aids. Behind the ‘edit’ button on the right you can then add the dutch dictionary. More details for this step are outlined here: distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/Dictionaries.html
• to use the dictionary in your document, you have to change the language, which is un-intuitively hidden behind Format->Character, where you have to look in the Font tab, where there is a ‘language’ drop-down list. I wonder how it ended up there… I would have expected this feature in paragraph styles under ‘language’, which doesn’t exist.