Spellchecker.xml

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<chapter id="chapter.spellchecker">
  <title>Spell checker<indexterm class="singular">
      <primary>Spell checker</primary>
    </indexterm></title>

  <para>OmegaT has a built-in spell checker based on the spelling checker used
  in Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird. It is
  consequently able to use the huge range of free spelling dictionaries
  available for these applications.</para>

  <section>
    <title>Installing spelling dictionaries</title>

    <para>Before the spell check function can be used, a suitable dictionary
    or dictionaries (i.e. for your target language) must be installed. To
    install spelling dictionaries, follow this procedure:</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>In your file manager, create a new folder in a suitable location
        in which to store spelling dictionaries (D:\Translations\spellcheckers
        in the example below).</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>In OmegaT, select <guisubmenu><indexterm class="singular">
            <primary>Menu Options</primary>

            <secondary>Spell checking</secondary>
          </indexterm></guisubmenu><guimenuitem>Options &gt; Spell
        Checking</guimenuitem>, then click <guibutton>Choose
        </guibutton>beside the Dictionary file folder field. Navigate to and
        select the folder you created for dictionaries.</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Place the dictionary files you wish to use in this folder. There
        are essentially two ways in which you can do this. You can either copy
        files manually, i.e. from elsewhere on your system, using your file
        manager; or you can use OmegaT's <emphasis role="bold">"Install new
        dictionary"</emphasis> function to provide a list of available
        dictionaries to select from. Note that the "Install" function requires
        an Internet connection. The selected languages will then be installed
        and will eventually appear in your spell checker setup window (this
        may take a while).</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para>Copying the files manually makes sense if you already have suitable
    dictionary files on your system, for instance as part of your Apache OpenOffice,
    LibreOffice, Firefox or Thunderbird installation. It is simpler, however, to look for
    dictionaries online, using the <emphasis role="bold">URL of online
    dictionaries</emphasis> field:</para>

    <figure id="spellchecker.setup">
      <title><indexterm class="singular">
          <primary>Spell checker</primary>

          <secondary>Spell checker setup</secondary>
        </indexterm>Spellchecker setup</title>

      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject role="html">
          <imagedata fileref="images/SpellcheckerSetup_25.png"/>
        </imageobject>

        <imageobject role="fo">
          <imagedata fileref="images/SpellcheckerSetup_25.png" width="80%"/>
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>

    <para>Clicking on <guibutton>Install new dictionary</guibutton> button
    will open the Dictionary installer window, where you can select the
    dictionaries you want to install.</para>

    <para>The names of the files must correspond to the language code of your
    target language as defined in the project properties dialog
    (<guimenu>Project &gt; Properties</guimenu>). For example, if you have
    selected ES-MX (Mexican Spanish) as the target language, the dictionary
    files must be named es_MX.dic and es_MX.aff. If you only have a standard
    Spanish dictionary available, with file names es_es.dic and es_es.aff for
    instance, you can copy these files to es_MX.dic and es_MX.aff, and the
    spelling dictionary will work. Note that this will of course check for the
    standard (Castillian) rather than for Mexican Spanish.</para>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Using spelling dictionaries</title>

    <para>There is no need to instruct OmegaT to use a particular spelling
    dictionary; OmegaT will use the correct language dictionary based upon the
    language codes of your project. Check however that the language codes are
    exactly the same: an FR-FR dictionary will not work with an FR target
    setting, for example. If necessary, edit the file names of the dictionary
    or change your project's language settings.</para>

    <para>To enable the spell checker, select <guimenuitem>Options &gt; Spell
    Checking</guimenuitem> and tick the <guilabel>Automatically check the
    spelling of text</guilabel> check box (see above).</para>

    <figure id="spellchecker.in.action">
      <title>Using spellchecker</title>

      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject role="html">
          <imagedata fileref="images/SpellcheckingText.png"/>
        </imageobject>

        <imageobject role="fo">
          <imagedata fileref="images/SpellcheckingText.png" width="80%"/>
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>

    <para>Right-clicking on an underlined word (Artund in the figure above)
    opens a drop-down menu listing suggestions for the correction (Art und).
    You can also instruct the spell checker to ignore all the occurrences of
    the mis-spelled word, or add it to the dictionary.</para>
  </section>

  <section id="hints">
    <title>Hints<indexterm class="singular">
        <primary>Spell checker</primary>

        <secondary>Hints</secondary>
      </indexterm></title>

    <para>If the spell checker is not working, then make sure first that the
    check box <guilabel>"Automatically check the spelling of text"</guilabel>
    in the spell checker dialog (<guisubmenu>Options &gt; Spell
    checking...)</guisubmenu> is checked.</para>

    <para>Also check that the target language code of your project against the
    available vocabularies in the setup window. The spell checker uses the
    target language code to determine the language to be used : if the target
    language is Brazilian Portuguese (PT_BR), the subfolder with vocabularies
    must contain the two vocabulary files, called
    <emphasis>pt_br.aff</emphasis> and <emphasis>pt_br.dic</emphasis>.</para>

    <para>If you have already translated a large body of text, and then
    realize the target language code of the project does not match the spell
    checker's language code (you specified pt_BR as the language, but there
    are no pt_BR vocabularies, for instance) you can simply copy the two
    corresponding files and rename them (e.g. from
    <emphasis>pt_PT.aff</emphasis> and <emphasis>pt_PT.dic</emphasis> to
    <emphasis>pt_BR.aff</emphasis> and <emphasis>pt_BR.dic</emphasis>). Of
    course it is much wiser, to take a short break and download the correct
    versions of the spell checker.</para>

    <para>Note that <filename>Remove</filename> physically removes the
    selected vocabularies. If they are used by some other application on your
    system, they will disappear from that application, too. If, for whatever
    reason, you need to do this from time to time, it may make sense to copy
    the files involved to a different folder, reserved just for use by
    OmegaT.</para>
  </section>
</chapter>