Setting up Finnish spellchecker and hyphenation in Libreoffice 3.4.5 on Scientific Linux 6.3 x64.

The Libreoffice shipping with Scientific Linux 6.3 lacks the support for Finnish spelling, grammar and hyphenation. Furthermore parts of the spellchecking application “voikko” are almost a decade old and will not work. If someone happens to be interested (fat chance lol), here is a brief description of how it can be done.

Unfortunately the Voikko developers are concentrating on Debian/SuSe and Windows, so the RHEL branch seems completely orphaned.

The whole thing requires 4 different software packages:
Malaga version 7.12 or later
malaga-suomi-voikko version 1.3 or later
libvoikko version 3 or later
libreoffice-voikko version 3.2 or later.

I installed my workstation from live CD, so first we need some tools:
$ yum install gcc gtk2-devel glib2-devel gtk2 glib2 libreoffice-sdk malaga-suomi-voikko

Download Malaga source (I got malaga-7.12 from http://home.arcor.de/bjoern-beutel/malaga). Unpack and run
$ ./configure - -prefix=/usr/local/voikko; make
$ make install

The libvoikko package shipping with RHEL6 is extremely old (2.2) and won't work. You need something that's been written in the 21st century, like 3.5, and the source can be found at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/voikko/?source=directory

Download, unpack, go to the source directory and run
$ ./configure - -prefix=/usr/local/voikko - -with-dictionary-path=/usr/lib64/voikko
$ make
$ make install

After this you can test that the spelling checker works by running:
$ /usr/local/voikko/bin/voikkospell

Type finnish words one at a time and the spelling checker prompts either C: (correct) or W: (wrong). If this part works, then we can move to creating the necessary Libreoffice extension.

First run
$ cat > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libvoikko.conf[ENTER]
then type: /usr/local/voikko/lib[CTRL+D]
$ ldconfig

Download libreoffice-voikko-3.3.tar.gz (for example Fedora). Unpack, go to the source directory and run:
$ sh /usr/lib64/libreoffice/basis3.4/sdk/setsdkenv_unix

Answer to the questions regarding the location of various libraries and utilities. All the defaults were correct with my setup. Then run
$ ./configure

The resulting Makefile needs one adjustment. Uncomment the line near the top of the file:
# LIBVOIKKO_PATH=/usr/local/voikko
so that it reads:
LIBVOIKKO_PATH=/usr/local/voikko

Save the Makefile.

Then you make the Libreoffice extension by running
$ make oxt

Install it manually by running
$ cp build/voikko.oxt [space here] /usr/lib64/libreoffice/share/extensions/
(notice above the [space here] only means one SPACE-key press, but it was invisible in this forum so I added the notice in brackets)

You should be good to go now. Open Libreoffice Writer, Click Tools|Extension Manager|Add and navigate to /usr/lib64/libreoffice/share/extensions and click voikko.oxt. After that remove all the hunspell-modules by selecting Tools|Options|LAnguage Settings|Writing Aids and add only the Voikko modules.

Have fun. Corrections and suggestions welcome.