Proofing Tools and Office 2007

 

A user was asking us the other day whether there was going to be a Proofing Tools 2007 kit, as was the case for previous releases of Office. The answer is not just “yes”, so it may be worth giving a little more details.

 

There will indeed be a Proofing Tools Kit (PTK), but it will not be marketed as it was in Office 2003. The 2007 PTK will actually be part of the Multi-Language Pack (MLP). This pack consists of 3 CDs. The first two CDs include all the Single Language Packs (SLP), each of which contain proofing tools (spell-checker, grammar checker, hyphenator, thesaurus…) as well as the localized user interface (UI) and localized Help for a given language. The third disc will contain all the proofing tools by themselves.

 

If a user just wants to add one or two proofing tools (say, they want to use a Russian or an Italian speller, which is not part of the default English version of Office), they will be able to download the SLPs for those additional languages in which they are interested. But if someone is deploying many proofing tools languages and does not want the associated UI or are concerned about disc space, they will be able to purchase the boxed MLP and use the third disc. Enterprise customers that purchase the multilingual license will have access to any of these deployment methods.

 

This flexibility is designed to respond to demand from users. We have regularly seen on newsgroups that many individual users are interested in adding one or two languages to their own configuration. Being able to directly download and purchase a single set of linguistic tools (a speller, a thesaurus and a grammar checker, for instance) for a given additional language will meet many users’ needs.

 

-- Thierry Fontenelle (Program Manager)