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At the same time as Vārdnīcas, Kroko had also been patiently working on another Latvian proofing tool for several months and trying to improve on the already existing, but limited cocoAspell Latvian spellchecker. After several unsuccessful attempts a decision was made to go another route using MySpellX and Janis Eisaks’ OpenOffice Latvian spell checker dictionary.

The result is Pareizrakstība, a Latvian spellchecker, which works in most applications that make use of the system wide spell checking services in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Examples include Mail, TextEdit, iCal, Skype and others. As of writing there were known problems with iWork 08 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) which the author has agreed to address in a future update. In any case users are not complaining too loudly since Pareizrakstība is also donationware and available as a free download from Kroko’s Web site. 

Kroko also plans to create an easy way for users to submit additions/corrections back to Janis Eisaks so that the open source Latvian spell checker dictionary can be regularly updated and improved benefiting both the OpenOffice and Macintosh user community.

Reinis Adovičs aka Kroko, a budding architect and city planner, worked day and night for a whole week this past March to produce Latvian dictionaries for the Macintosh platform (Latviešu–English, English–Latviešu, Latviešu–Deutsch, Deutsch-Latviešu, Latviešu- Русский, Русский –Latviešu, Latviešu Sinonīmu, Latviešu Eirožargons).

After installing Vārdnīcas the dictionaries can then be selected from Apple’s Dictionary application. You’ll need at least Macintosh OX X 10.5. Vārdnīcas is available as a free download from Kroko’s Web site.