L10n:Dictionaries

If we ever want to improve our situation with dictionaries, it would be good to know:

• How many different dictionary formats there are
• Which ones different major projects use
• What dictionaries exist in each
• Who knows about their copyright status

Gerv says: to be included in the source tree, and therefore in builds shipped by Mozilla, a dictionary needs to have a licence compatible with all three of the "MPL 1.1", "LGPL 2.1 or later" and "GPL 2.0 or later". Examples of compatible licensing schemes include:

• Mozilla tri-licence
• BSD or MIT-style licences
• Public domain

Afrikaans

Afrikaans dictionaries are built for MySpell and aspell by translate.org.za. Releases available at SourceForge. They are released under LGPL. --Friedelwolff 07:57, 9 Feb 2006 (PST)

Arabic

There are GPL/LGPL/MPL Hunspell dictionaries for Firefox and Thunderbird 3 on http://ayaspell.sourceforge.net/ site. Nemethl 04:35, 28 January 2008 (PST)

Basque

MySpell (Firefox 2) and Hunspell (Firefox 3) dictionaries: http://www.euskara.euskadi.net/r59-738/es/contenidos/informacion.

Bulgarian [bg]

There is only one project dealing with free Bulgarian dictionaries and its releases can be found in bgoffice Sourceforge project files. The license of spell dictionaries (aspell/ispell/myspell) is GPL2.

Catalan

Catalan dictionaries are available in MySpell and Aspell formats under a GPL License at http://www.jmoratinos.com Toniher

Czech

The only open Czech dictionary I know is [Ispell] that was coverted by OOo guys to [MySpell]. Both dictionaries are under GPL/LGPL. However the original Ispell is kind of abandoned and its author doesn't communicate at all. Therefore, our efforts with relicencing failed. --User:Pawell

Danish

The danish dictionary is available as aspell/ispell/myspell under GPL2. An alternative dictionary using hunspell is being developed.

British English [en-GB]

The [British English dictionary] is released under the LGPL.

Dutch

The dutch dictionary is available as myspell. The project purposely wants to be very open, such that the list can be used anywhere. Therefore, it is available under BSD and CC-by.

French

There's a MySpell fr_FR dictionary provided by OOo under GPL v2 [1]. Licence notes : [2](fr).

Hebrew

OpenOffice.org has a localized version in hebrew, that uses the Hspell format, which is similar to MySpell. They converted it to MySpell for use with mozilla, and it's available here. the MySpell format is GPL, and i think Hspell too. Tsahi

Hungarian

There are new MySpell (Firefox 2) and Hunspell (Firefox 3) add-ons on the Hungarian spelling dictionary site. Unfortunately, Hungarian add-on 1.1.3 of Mozilla Add-on site is bad, see Bug 412386. Hunspell dictionary is licensed under MPL, so we would like it, as default spelling dictionary of the Hungarian localized versions of Mozilla products: Bug 414344. Nemethl 04:25, 28 January 2008 (PST)

+1 Timar 04:40, 28 January 2008 (PST)

Indonesian

MySpell id_ID dictionary is provided by OOo under GPL v2 [3]. License notes: http://ftp.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/dictionaries/README_id_ID.txt (in Indonesian and English). There is aspell dictionaries under GPL v2 too in aspell project made by the same author. The author (Benitius Brevoort) is willing to make the dictionary files from OOo available under GPLv2/LGPLv2.1/MPLv1.1 licenses to be used in Mozilla products. The email conversation and licenses is available at http://www.ewesewes.net/fxspellcheck/permissions.txt. We would like this dictionary to be included in the Firefox 3 release, see Bug 417095 --Rodin

Irish

The free Irish dictionary is available in aspell/ispell/myspell formats, licensed under the GPL. See http://borel.slu.edu/ispell/ --Kscanne

Italian

The free Italian dictionary is available in aspell/myspell/OOo formats and as an .xpi for Mozilla, licensed only under the GPL. We asked about relicensing it, but the answer was negative. See Linguistico project. --Prometeo

Kurdish

The Kurdish free dictonary is available as aspell/ispell/myspell, licensed under the GPL. If necessary, we can license it under something else, too. The URL is http://sourceforge.net/projects/myspellkurdish --Erdal Ronahi 07:00, 21 Feb 2006 (PST)

Latvian

Latvian myspell dictionary is available under a BSD licence from http://sourceforge.net/projects/openoffice-lv/.

Lithuanian

Lithuanian ispell/aspell/myspell dictionary is available under a BSD licence from http://files.akl.lt/ispell-lt/.

Macedonian [mk]

The macedonian dictionary is public domain.

Polish

The Polish free dictonary is available as aspell/ispell/myspell, licensed under the MPL/GPL/LGPL and CC-SA: http://www.kurnik.pl/slownik/ort/

Other projects using this dictionary:

• OpenOffice.org (it uses the older, GPL/CC-SA licensed version, see http://ftp.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/dictionaries/README_pl_PL.txt )

Marcoos 10:04, 19 July 2006 (PDT)

Portuguese

The base dictionaries come from Project Natura's myspell dictionary. Fore Firefox 2 the dictionaries were licensed GPL2/BSD. In the meantime the license changed to GPL3. They've offered a triple-licensed (GPL2+, LGPL2.1+, MPL1.1) version for Firefox.

Dictionaries: http://natura.di.uminho.pt/natura/natura?&topic=Dicion%E1rios

Joao Miguel Neves 15:51, 12 September 2006 (WET)

Russian

There are three Russian Myspell dictionaries in Openoffice (all of them were converted from ispell format) - two of them are licensed under some proprietary license and one is licensed under GPL/LGPL/MPL/CC-SA. --Unghost

Slovak

The open Slovak dictionaries are maintained by [sk-spell] project. Both ispell and aspell dictionaries are released under GPL/LGPL. The myspell dictionary is licensed under GPL / LGPL / MPL --User:Branor

Serbian

The Serbian dictionary is made with Myspell. It was produced by Igor Miletić (Игор Милетић), based on the Serbian Aspell dictionary made by Goran Rakić (Горан Ракић). See Serbian Aspell. The dictionary is released under MPL, GPL, and LGPL, the proof of which is given in the LICENSE.txt file of the localized spell checker directory. filmil

Swedish [sv-SE]

A Swedish Hunspell dictionary made by Göran Andersson is available from DSSO. The dictionary is released under the triple-licence MPL/GPL/LGPL. Hasse

Ukrainian [uk]

There is a project which produces myspell/aspell/ispell Ukrainian dictionaries from single source. More information can be found on wiki page of Knowledge base for Ukrainian language. Downloads, CVS etc can be found on SourceForge. These spell dictionaries distributed under GPL, LGPL, and MPL.

Vietnamese

There's currently an Aspell dictionary for Vietnamese that is licensed under the LGPL. [4] I've been contacted by someone creating a spellchecker for a Vietnamese distribution of OpenOffice.org (Hunspell?). A demo of that spellchecker is available. [5] I haven't tried either, but I'd imagine creating a Vietnamese spell checker is a bit more straightforward than an English one, say. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 01:25, 7 June 2007 (PDT)

Walloon (wa)

There is a Walloon dictionaries being enriched; it's main target is aspell, but myspell is easily built from it (there is a "make myspell" rule); also a rule to make an XPI for firefox; and a (quite rude) rule to make a myspell for OOo (copying the files to local directory tree, ouch :) )

It can be downloaded on http://chanae.walon.org/walon/aspell.php license is LGPL. -- Srtxg

Zulu

Provisional Zulu dictionaries are built for MySpell and aspell by translate.org.za. Releases available at SourceForge. They are released under LGPL. --Friedelwolff 07:57, 9 Feb 2006 (PST)