Languages

[spmima]

Is there a way of using wp DOS 6.0 language files in wp for linux? For example, the Finnish hyphenation would be very useful. I guess just naming the dos file differently would not do. Isn't it so that the wp dos macros must be converted before they can be used in wp unix?

I had a complex love/hate relationship to wp in 1980s and first half of 90s. Now I love the feeling of using the old commands (although all the dos commands do not work on UNIX version).

[emendelson]

Have you tried renaming the WP51 files to match the Unix files - something like wplex.su? I doubt that the Unix programmers rewrote things that were already written for DOS.

[spmima]

Thank you for your input. Yes, I have tried that with no luck. It can be that I have not copied the right one to the right place.

[emendelson]

At a terminal, using sudo, copy the files to /opt/wp80/wplib. Perhaps you've done that already?

[spmima]

Dear emendelson,

Thank you for your kind help.

I copied wp6 DOS-file wpsu.lex to /opt/wp80/wplib and renamed it to wplex.su. There may be other files too which should be added . The Dos version has these files in wpc60dos directory: wpcc60su.dtl wp_fi_su.hlp wp_fi_su.trs wphy60su.dtl wpsu.htd wpsu.hyd wpsu.lex wp_wp_su.lab.

I even tried to launch the wpspell -program using US-dictionary but it claims about privileges, even when I try it as root.

[spmima]

From wp8 for unix manual (p.448):
"The dictionaries listed above function on a word-list basis, except for Finnish,
French-Canada, French-National, Italian, and Swedish, which use algorithmic
dictionaries. Algorithmic dictionaries use rules instead of word lists to check
spelling. Because they use rules, they can find more words than word-list
dictionaries. Algorithmic dictionaries cannot be modified, either in the Speller
or in the Speller Utility Program." -- so I guess Italians, Swedes and Canadians are having the same problem here.

[emendelson]

Also, it may be worth running sudo chmod 644 wpsu.lex in case it has the wrong file attributes.

[spmima]

I did that -- does not work.

Something is wrong. Wp allows to change the language to Finnish ("su") with layout-other-language but if I try to use the spelling check, wp crashes. With English and German it does work without any problems. From the console, wpspell (in /opt/wp80/bin) does not work in any language. Do others have this problem, too.

[emendelson]

You are absolutely right that wp crashes when the language is set to SU and you press Ctrl+F2 to run the spell checker. I think this is not fixable, because the DOS Finnish language module installs two DOS programs, SUSPELL.EXE and SUHYPHEN.EXE that seem to have no Unix equivalents (unless they are on the installation media but not in the download here). Under DOS, Another file installed by Finnish language module is WP{WP}.SPM which is evidently needed for spelling under DOS.

If the Finnish files are not available for Unix/Linux then you should be able to get this to work by running wp under dosemu.

On a separate issue, this works to run the speller but I may have performed more steps than needed.

1. mkdir ~/wplib (this creates a directory in your home folder)
2. cd ~/wplib
3. cp /opt/wp80/wplib/*.su . (this should copy the Finnish speller to your home folder's wplib
4. cp /opt/wp80/wplib/*.us . (replace us with any other language you want, or repeat with multiple languages)
5. Run wp, use Shift-F1/Location of Files and set the Thesaurus, etc. files location to ~/wplib and do the same for the supplementary directory. Exit wp.
6. Run this command: /opt/wp80/wpbin/wpspell
7. When prompted for the Name of dictionary to use, you must enter a full path, not something that begins with ~, so you need something like this: /home/YOURUSERNAME/wplib/wplex.us

Let us know how it works. I performed other steps to give myself permissions on the files in ~/wplib but I think they weren't necessary.

[spmima]

Thank you ! now the wpspell works from terminal with US dictionary. The Finnish dictionary I copied from wp 6.0 DOS does not work, however. When I try to open wplex.su, I get error 92. I guess there must be several Finnish dictiorary-related files to copied, or maybe the wplex.su is not compatible with UNIX.

[emendelson]

Thank you ! now the wpspell works from terminal with US dictionary. The Finnish dictionary I copied from wp 6.0 DOS dowes not work, however. When I try to open wplex.su, I get error 92. I guess there must be several Finnish dictiorary-related files to copied, or maybe the wplex.su is not compatible with UNIX.

WP Unix uses the WPDOS 5.1 dictionaries. The WP 6 dictionaries presumably will not work. But please read my preceding message: The Finnish dictionaries are (1) not editable in spell.exe and (2) seem to require the SUSPELL.EXE program installed by the language module for 5.1 DOS.

[spmima]

Thank you again. Yes, I understand that wplex.su is not editable because it is an algorithmic dictionary. It is also unusable. I have only wp DOS 6.0 disks, not wp 5.1. That is the end of the story, then.

[emendelson]

This won't be of any use for Finnish, but this CD has the 5.1 language modules, though they are not mentioned in the description:

https://archive.org/details/corel-word-perfect-8-language-module-1998