> How does this Finnish dictionary and hyphenator differ from
> the one on the OpenOffice.org dictionary download site whose README states:
It's the same program. The reason I'm making a Debian package for Soikko, is
that it requires a bit complicated installation which involves regcomp and
has to be repeated every time openoffice.org-bin is upgraded.
> I assume the Soikko is a closed source spellchecker (I saw no source for
> the Soikko spellchecker anyplace), ... is it?
Unfortunately so.
> If different, is the source to your spellchecker freely available under an
> opensource license and if so how does it compare to this one? I would
> rather have a fully open source spellchecker available on the
> OpenOffice.org site instead of an open interface to a "closed" one.
Me too.
I actually previously planned to develop one by myself. However, grammar rules
of the Finnish language are rather complex.
They contain a lot of postfixes, word transformation for different purposes
and, most notably, allow joining words that belong to same logical group.
E.g. apple=omena, piirakka=pie, and thus apple pie = omenapiirakka. If the
pie happens to be mine, I would say omenapiirakkani (my apple pie). As you
can see, this basically renders simple dictionary schemes useless:
katsoa = to look
katsoin = I looked
katsotutittekokin? = did you(plural) also make someone else look?
You can pretty easily come up with monster words like:
Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellisyydellänsäkäänköhän? =
Not even with his or her own ability or property of not making other
people to make things unorganized, I wonder? (approximately)
While hyphenation rules are simple in principle, alas, joined words break them
by requiring that they should be hyphenated separately => you need a
dictionary and morphological analysator even to make a hyphenator.
Pasi has studied this mess in a university and is working for some company
that does such stuff; I can understand his decision to keep the source closed
for now.
It doesn't mean, however, that I wouldn't like to try it someday. I happen to
be in the same university as Pasi does, so maybe I could attend to the
lectures on the subject as he did.. ;)
- Jarno
