Framemaker 10 site dictionary

[rombanks]

Hello fellows,

Question:

Let's say I updated my site dictionary (located on Win7 under C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\AdobeFrameMaker10\dict) with a list of terms that are allowed in my documents (e.g., auto-negotiation (correct) vs. auto negotiation (incorrect and should be picked up by the spell checker)).

It's not clear to me how to make the spell checker identify incorrectly spelled terms based on the entries that appear in the site dictionary. Just adding the correct entries to the dictionary line by line does not change anything.

Thank you for your input in advance!

[Arnis_Gubins]

If you already have spell-checked the document, then FM marks all of the paragraphs as being checked. It will skip over those when re-running the spell-checker (unless they've been modified). If you added/updated the site dictionary after a spell-check. It won't take re-check those paragraphs.

You have to enable the "Mark All PAragraphs for Rechecking" option in the Dictionaries panel of the Spell-checker. This will then allow you to recheck the content using the updated site dicttionary.

I'm also assuming that you've correctly specified the path to the site dictionary in your maker.ini settings. More details on FM's dictionaries are found in the following blog:

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/12/dictionaries_in_fm9.html

[rombanks]

Hi Arnis,

Thanks for your response! Yes, I saw that article on the Adobe blog, but it did not answer the question of whether (and how) the site dict. can cause the FM spell checker identify "auto negotiation" as an incorrectly spelled compound word and suggest the correct spelling ('auto-negotiation').

[Mike Wickham]

I don't believe that FrameMaker's spelling checker will see "auto

negotiation" as anything but two words and check them separately. The

free SDL Author Assistant add-on might be able to do that, though:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4959

[rombanks]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your input!

I tested the SDL AS addon for FM 10 a while ago, and it appeared that it's not smart enough to see the difference between "auto negotiation" and "auto-negotiation" (it ignores the dash in the compound word defined in the dictionary DB).

To be honest, I did not expect much from a free addon. 😉

[Arnis_Gubins]

@roman,

I'm with Mike on this. There's no way that two separate, correctly spelled words would be flagged as incorrect even when you have a compound entry in the site dictionary. However, it would flag something like "auto-negatiation".

[Winfried Reng]

Nevertheless I would really appreciate, if FrameMaker would be able to mark two separate words as an incorrect spelling, if there is an alternative with hyphen in the dictionary.

I will request this as a new feature.

Best regards

Winfried

[rombanks]

Hi Winfried,

I agree, but I believe it may take quite a long time for Adobe to implement. As I said, I think, this should be done programmatically (Extendscript?).

[Arnis_Gubins]

With FM11, the Hunspell dictionaries are also available. These are open source (see: http://hunspell.sourceforge.net/ ) and you can modify contents to suit your needs (see: http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/editing-the-spell-checking-dictionaries ).

[rombanks]

Hi Arnis,

Thank you for the info! I didn't know that. The good thing is that Hunspell is an open-source dictionary. But it's not clear how it can be utilized in the case discussed in this thread. I can also modify the contents of the regular FM site dictionary, but this does not provide me with any extra functionality like the one we discussed here.

As I said previously, it looks like the only solution is developing a special plugin for that.

[Arnis_Gubins]

From a quick look at the Hunspell stuff, it looks like you can create custom Affix rules that might allow the "auto-" as prefix. It also allows for the definition of "forbidden" words. You might get better mileage out trying use the features in the customizable spell-checking rather than having to try do dlve into FM's Extendscript or creating a custom plug-in.

If these spellings are critical, then also look at toolsets like those from Acrolinx (http://www.acrolinx.com).

[rombanks]

Hi Arnis,

Thank you for your input! The chances I will upgrade to FM11 are very low. So, I have to think about alternative solutions for smarter spell-checking.

I watched the Acrolinx demo and asked a question regarding the ability to identify incorrectly spelled compound words. The answer was that this ability is not a built-in feature. The "Acrolinx linguists" have to create rules that will enable the SW to identify such words and suggest a correction.

[rombanks]

Hi Arnis,

I see what you mean, but I was just wondering if it's somehow possible to create a list of correct and incorrect terms in the dictionary, so once FM encounters "auto negotiation", it would suggest a correction when running spell checker. I now understand that the site dictionary is not the right place for that. Perhaps, this can be implemented programmatically.

Thanks, and my best wishes to you all!