LibreOffice Writer Spellcheck Does Not Work

[billksun]

Issue description

When editing a document in Writer, the spellchecker does not catch any mistakes. Even with hunspell installed.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open LibreOffice Writer.
2. Start typing misspelled words.
3. Observe that there are no squiggly red underline for the misspelled words.
4. Hit F7 or click on Tools -> Spelling and Grammar...
5. Observe a popup that says "The spellcheck is complete.", click "OK" and observe that no misspellings are detected.
6. Install hunspell and hunspellDicts.en-us, repeat the above steps and observe that the problem still exists.

Technical details

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 4.9.73, NixOS, 18.03pre124015.f59a0f7f1a6 (Impala)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: no
• version: nix-env (Nix) 1.11.16
• channels(root): "nixos-18.03pre125130.3a763b91963"
• nixpkgs: /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs

[billksun]

Solved by installing a dictionary extension:
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/english-dictionaries

This isn't very apparent, and definitely takes away from the out-of-the-box experience. Spell and grammar check are now basic expectations of a word processor, perhaps some work on packaging can simplify this process.

[7c6f434c]

The real issue is that it is impossible to quickly try changes to LibreOffice packaging (and I have no plan how to solve this)

[obadz]

@sib-null, thanks for posting your solution! 👍