The OpenOffice.org Dictionary Installer
Help

This is the provisional help file for the OpenOffice.org Dictionary Installer. It currently contains information on setting up DictInstall for local mode, and with proxy servers. I hope to expand it soon to make it a full "manual" for the program.

Local Mode

DictInstall can be run in a "local install mode". This allows dictionaries to be installed from a hard disk rather than over the Internet. This could be particularly useful for CD-ROM maintainers who wish to provide the Dictionary Installer with all dictionaries as part of their CDs.

Setting up local mode
To set up local mode, it is necessary to download all the dictionaries and place them (as zip files) into a local folder. The dictionaries can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org web site. I recommend that they be placed in a folder local which is placed inside the DictInstall folder, though other locations are possible. (DictInstall already supports relative path names for this folder, and full support for absolute path names is being considered.)

You will also need to download a dictionary list file for each language that you wish to support (here are the current English, German, Danish and Finnnish lists). Note that you can download just one if you wish and use it for all languages. Once you have downloaded the dictionary lists, place them in the same directory as the dictionary zip files.

Assuming that you now have a folder called local inside the DictInstall folder, you now need to make a few changes to the configuration file dictinstall.ini. Under [config] there are two lines in the file like this:

	#localpath=local\
	#locallist=dict.txt
	
You will need to remove the hash symbols. This will cause the program to look in the localpath folder (in this case local\) and read the dictionary list (in this case dict.txt) provided there.

If you choose to download dictionary lists for multiple languages, then you will need to point to each of those lists. For example, if you downloaded both English and German dict.txt files, you will need to rename one of them and put its name into the dictinstall.ini file. If you renamed the German one to dict.de.txt, then you would need to add the line locallist=dict.de.txt to the German ([de]) section of the configuration file:

	[de]
	listurl=http://www.ooodocs.org/dictinstall/de/dict.txt
	nexthelp=http://www.ooodocs.org/dictinstall/de/nexthelp.html
	locallist=dict.de.txt
	
In fact, in the current version, the line is provided as an example, so you need only remove the hash from the front of this line too.

When you now run the Dictionary Installer, it will look inside the folder you specified and see if there is a dictionary list there. If so, the program should then install dictionaries directly from that folder. Please note that if the program is unable to find the dictionary list in the location specified, it will revert to its usual mode and download the list and dictionaries over the Internet.

If you have any questions or problems getting local installation mode to work, please email me.

Proxy servers

From version 0.9.3, DictInstall supports the use of HTTP proxy servers. This should allow the program to be used on many networks where it was previously unable. Note that at this point, proxy support is fairly untested: all positive and negative feedback on this feature is greatly appreicated.

If you are using an HTTP proxy for your web browsing, and you use Internet Explorer, the program will hopefully work with your proxy server transparently. When it is run, it finds your Internet Explorer settings and tries to use them.

If you do not use Internet Explorer, or if you are having problems with this, you will need to set up proxy manually. To do this, you will need to change one line in the configuration file dictinstall.ini.

	proxy=auto
	
When set to auto, the program looks for Internet Explorer proxy settings and uses those. If you have had any problems with this and want to turn off proxy use altogether, change this line to say:
	proxy=off
	
If you are using another browser or want to set proxy settings manually, then you should change this line to contain the server and port number of your server. For example, if your proxy server is on the computer myproxy and port 8000, then you would change the line to say:
	proxy=myproxy:8000
	

If you have any comments or have been having any problems with the proxy server feature, please send me an email.


© 2002 Lee Corbin
Updated: 22 May 2002 for DictInstall 0.9.3