LanguageTool can be used in a different number of ways:

As a LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org extension

Double click the downloaded LanguageTool-2.x.oxt to install it. If that doesn't work, call Tools -> Extension Manager -> Add.... Close LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org and re-start it. Type some text with an error that LanguageTool can detect and you should see a blue underline. You might want to use "This is an test." as an example – make sure the text language is set to English for this example.

As a stand-alone application

Download the *.zip version (not the *.oxt one) and unzip it. Then start languagetool-standalone.jar by double clicking on it. If your computer isn't configured to start *.jar archives, start it from the command line using java -jar languagetool-standalone.jar.

You can use the --tray option to start LanguageTool inside the system tray. After you copy any text to the clipboard, clicking LanguageTool in the system tray will cause the application to open and check the contents of the clipboard automatically. This way you can use LanguageTool for applications that do not support direct integration of the checker.

By the way, the file size of the stand-alone version is much larger than that of the LibreOffice/OpenOffice extension because it contains spell checking and thus dictionaries for most languages.

As a stand-alone application on the command line

See "as a stand-alone application" above, but start LanguageTool.jar using:

Use java -jar languagetool-commandline.jar --help to get detailed usage information.

Embedding LanguageTool on a Web Page

• Integration on Websites

Embedding LanguageTool from other Applications

• Using LanguageTool from a Java application
• Using LanguageTool via HTTP

Page last modified: 2013-04-01