How I Added an LLM-Based Grammar Checking + TeX Math Import To LibreOffice

Former Microsoft programmer Keith Curtis "wrote and self-published After the Software Wars to explain the caliber of free and open source software," according to his entry on Wikipedia, "and why he believes Linux is technically superior to any proprietary OS." He's also KeithCu (long-time Slashdot reader #925,649), and has written a blog post on "How I added an LLM-based grammar checking + TeX math import to LibreOffice.":At Microsoft, I spent five years working on the text components RichEdit and Quill, and came to understand the "physics" of word processing: the file formats, data structures, and algorithms that provided fast access to text and properties, independent of the length of the file. Selecting one million characters to make them bold took about the same time as changing one character, because of the clever data structures (piece tables) and algorithms in these engines... When I decided to add a real-time AI grammar checker to [LibreOffice plugin] WriterAgent, I knew what I was getting into, but I underestimated the trickery of LibreOffice's UNO. His site shares the surprises he encountered, one by one. (Starting with "the office suite throws a bunch of initialization variables at your constructor. If your Python __init__ method doesn't handle them, the code fails to map the call, the stack misaligns, and the program dies.") There's sentence casing issues, duplicate words, and foreign-language syntax - all culminating in new features for "a LibreOffice extension (Python + UNO) that adds generative AI editing to Writer, Calc, and Draw..." "If you want to try it out, the repo is here... Let's make LibreOffice and the free desktop AI-native!"

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