User Dictionary Suggestion...

[andyb]

Hi folks,

This is my first post - please be gentle...

I've rummaged around on the net and cannot find another solution to this (other than mine), so I thought I'd ask here!

I'm currently 'involved' (read providing Tech Support) in a couple of e-pub collaborations using Sigil and I've hit upon a small niggle.

One of the books is Natural History (flora and fauna) based and has a large number of Latin names (over 1000) which as you can imagine drives the spell checker nuts.

Consequently, I only wanted to set up the user dictionary for this book once, it's on a Dropbox share containing all the files for the e pub to which all collaborating parties have edit access.

I then created symlinks on all the machines involved to 'put' the file in the right place and configured Sigil to use the dictionary. This works well but requires some tech savvy to set up.

I got to thinking - "wouldn't it be much easier if it was possible to specify a path for a user dictionary overriding the default as well as the dictionary name..."

That way an e-pubs dictionary can be kept with the e-pub no matter where it is stored.

Just a thought!

Andy B.

[KevinH]

Hi,
You would be better off creating a hunspell/myspell dictionary from your custom wordlist and distributing that. There already exists hunspell/myspell latin dictionaries and scientific dictionaries free to download. Check out Firefox, OpenOffice, and LibreOffice websites and hunspell for links to specialized dictionaries and for how to create an affix definition file and then use it to create an official dictionary from your custom wordlist.

KevinH

[andyb]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the tip I'll go play...

But I still think that it would be useful to be able to specify the location of a user dictionary just to help keep files together for archiving etc...

Andy B.

[andyb]

Well that worked - sort of...

I found a Latin .otx file on the net, unpacked it and extracted the relevant files into \AppData\Local\sigil-ebook\sigil\hunspell_dictionaries.

I can now spell check in UK English or Latin but not both at the same time 8-(

Problem is I have English prose with Latin names eg: -

"the Australian alien, the steelblue ladybird (Halmus chalybeus), was recorded..."

The hunspell dictionary is set to English for the prose but Halmus chalybeus flags as unknown (obviously!)

Is the a way of exporting the spelling errors to a plain text file so they can be checked externally so I can then stuff them in the user dictionary for the E-pub?

Bright ideas anyone?

Cheers!

Andy B.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by andyb

But I still think that it would be useful to be able to specify the location of a user dictionary just to help keep files together for archiving etc...Andy B.

Maybe I'm missing your point, but there already is a dedicated location for (word list based) user dictionaries that you can access via:

Edit > Preferences > Open Preferences Location

User dictionaries are in the aptly named user_dictionaries folder. :-)

I.e., all you have to do is create a word list, e.g. user_dic, move it to the user_dictionaries folder and add the name of the new user dictionary to the following sigil.ini entry.

[user_preferences]
...
enabled_user_dictionaries=default, user_dic

The next time the user opens Sigil, the new user dictionary will be enabled by default. IIRC, user dictionary entries with accented characters and umlauts are not supported, though.

[andyb]

Sussed it - I created another new dictionary selected all the "mis-spelled" words and added them to the new dictionary.

This gives us a text file which can be externally checked and then merged with the original user dictionary and sorted to provide a new user dictionary for the book.

Doh! - easy when you think about it!

Andy B.