[Evolution] IS THE SPELL CHECKER BROKEN IN 1.2.2?

[Oran Gutan <Oran Gutan comcast net>]

Installed v. 1.2.2 in a Gentoo box (2.4.19-gentoo-r5).

Very happy with its performance, except for one fundamental flaw, the
spell checker refuses to work.  That is,gnome-spell does not load any
dictionaries.

Reinstalled gnome-spell twice with all its dependencies and the "en_"
dictionary.  Aspell work fine from the console.  However, when I do a
"/usr/bin/gnome-spell-component-0.5" I get the following error message:

"** ERROR **: It was not possible to register a new dictionary factory
aborting..."

Reinstalled oaf and ORBit as well (twice).

Any ideas?

Thank you!