Spell Checker

[phossler]

Is there a way to

1. Show the entire misspelt word in the Spell Checker? "nimals" is all that is shown in the misspelling list, even though the actual word is "~nimals"

2. Show a line or 2 of the text around the misspelling in the word list? Now I have to keep sliding the word list around to see what the word really is and what the surrounding text says

(This was a pretty easy example, but there were some that were very non-obvious)

[theducks]

When I see an obvious 'partial', I double click the word (on the left column), and it jumps to the next occurrence (could be more than 1 ) and see what is going on (and sometimes fix it)
~ and other are symbols, not punctuation or dashes, which is wy they are not included.
IMHO Calibre's Spell check does better than Sigils, which is why it is the one I use most.
My one gripe with all of them. Flagging UK English spelling (US Locale PC)

[phossler]

Yes ... but

1. The spelling word list usually hides the text with the misspelled word

2. Misplaced punctuation in a word is flagged, so why not show the user the entire word, including the symbol?

3. I usually just give up and change the book language to en-GB

<dc:language>en-GB</dc:language>

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

My one gripe with all of them. Flagging UK English spelling (US Locale PC)

Get a dictionary that allows both, IIRC there's one at Apache Office.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by phossler

3. I usually just give up and change the book language to en-GB

Curious - what difference would that make?

I use the Reports tool to look for unexpected Words and Characters before I spellcheck. Where unexpected varies depending on genre e.g. I wouldn't expect to find a '~' in novel but it might be legit in an economics text to mean approximate.

Seems you're using a small screen. You might want to get a tool that will let you rollup the spellcheck window after you double click into the code window. On Windows I use Actual Tools Buttons, it's not free but it's worked for me since XP days so I'm sticking to it. Pretty sure there are zero-cost equivalents these days. To roll up/down I just press Ctrl+Win+R.

BR

[phossler]

Curious - what difference would that make?

Does not flag many UK spelling. (look at UK.jpg and US.jpg)

I use the Reports tool to look for unexpected Words and Characters before I spellcheck. Where unexpected varies depending on genre e.g. I wouldn't expect to find a '~' in novel but it might be legit in an economics text to mean approximate.

Guess I could / should do that

Seems you're using a small screen. You might want to get a tool that will let you rollup the spellcheck window after you double click into the code window. On Windows I use Actual Tools Buttons, it's not free but it's worked for me since XP days so I'm sticking to it. Pretty sure there are zero-cost equivalents these days. To roll up/down I just press Ctrl+Win+R.

27 wide screen

When in edit, and clicking spell check these are the windows layouts, After double clicking first misspelled word (acetones) the code window is positioned with the affected line highlighted and the cursor positioned

If you look at Full.jpg, the spell check window almost always covers the area of interest, requiring me to constantly drag the spell check window around

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by phossler

Does not flag many UK spelling. (look at UK.jpg and US.jpg)

Aa-ah, you were responding to theducks gripe.

Originally Posted by phossler

When in edit, and clicking spell check these are the windows layouts, After double clicking first misspelled word (acetones) the code window is positioned with the affected line highlighted and the cursor positioned

If you look at Full.jpg, the spell check window almost always covers the area of interest, requiring me to constantly drag the spell check window around

Why not make Codeview narrower and position the spell-check window on top Preview while you are spell-checking, viz:



BR

[phossler]

@BR --

Why not make Codeview narrower and position the spell-check window on top Preview while you are spell-checking, viz:

Just in the habit of having code view as large as possible I guess

That would work, even if I had to reposition things afterwards

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by phossler

Is there a way to

1. Show the entire misspelt word in the Spell Checker? "nimals" is all that is shown in the misspelling list, even though the actual word is "~nimals"

Would you expect ¿atencinó? to show the ¿ and ? instead of just "atencinó" as a spelling error? How many spell checkers have you see where special characters are considered as part of a word?

[phossler]

If I'm using a Spanish dictionary, I'd expect such things to be considered

I'm not sure about handling punctuation, since sometimes words get turned in things like

Ho.se (house) or ho~se or ho`use, etc. Easily seeing context would allow correction to 'house' or 'horse'

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by phossler

Does not flag many UK spelling. (look at UK.jpg and US.jpg)

Because "en" stands for English (American OR British OR Other variants). Calibre will then spellcheck using whatever your default English dictionary is.

1. In Calibre Editor, go to Edit > Preferences > Editor Settings.

2. At the bottom of the list, there's a "Manage Spelling Dictionaries" button. Press it.

3. In the "Manage Dictionaries" window, set "United Kingdom" as your dictionary by highlighting it, then press the "Use this as the preferred variant for the English language" button.

4. Close out of everything, and next time you open Calibre's Editor, Calibre will check spelling using British spellings.

[phossler]

@Tex2002ans -- useful to know. In general however, it typically is only a single book that I would need to change the spell check language

Depending on how many flagged words there are, I've actually changed the GB spelling to the US spelling (not sure why I did it that way; too much time on my hands I guess)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by phossler

@Tex2002ans -- useful to know. In general however, it typically is only a single book that I would need to change the spell check language

Depending on how many flagged words there are, I've actually changed the GB spelling to the US spelling (not sure why I did it that way; too much time on my hands I guess)

You ruined it !

Folk do not seem to realize the UK English is more than just spelling.

There are regional phrasings that also set the tone / stage of a story.

Catherin Coulter has her 'Brit in the FBI' character stay a bit British in a typical US setting, while the US characters are typical Yanks
IMHO Perfect, same goes when one of us travels across the pond.
Regional Flavors

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by phossler

@Tex2002ans -- useful to know. In general however, it typically is only a single book that I would need to change the spell check language

Depending on how many flagged words there are, I've actually changed the GB spelling to the US spelling (not sure why I did it that way; too much time on my hands I guess)

I wrote about a workflow to handle "foreign words" in:

Export list of words in spellcheck

which also links to this post:

Is there a way to use the selection in a Saved Search?

... and now that I take a closer look, it was actually you who posted those threads! :P

Does that method not work?

And speaking of this, I've been keeping a close eye on Languagetool's updates, and ran across this useful file of theirs:

en-US-GB.txt

It's a list of ~4000 words (mostly z<->s, er<->re) that are spelled differently between American/British English.

Perhaps something along those lines could be used to mass automate most changes between them. I came up with something similar when I was mass correcting game files.

The thing you have to be careful with is there are some British variants, like Oxford, which prefer "-ize" words as well.

And when working on Non-Fiction, you can't go overriding book/article titles, blockquotes (maybe), and other edge-cases that shouldn't be altered.

[phossler]

Is there a way to use the selection in a Saved Search?

Guilty as charged

I was brought up to always italicize foreign words (most anyway) when used in English text, so that one wasn't really about spell checking

In that one I was was seeing if there was a general purpose F&R to 1) highlight a foreign word (e,g, ¿atencinó?), 2) run a saved search that would replace whatever the selections was with something like <span lang=sp><i>\1</i></span>.

Thought maybe a 'place holder' like

find: _SELECTION
replace: <span lang=es><i>\1</i></span>

Replace All

would allow a flexible saved search for (in this case) Spanish words (Had the side benefit of not spell checking against the English dictionary). Could have one for German, one for Russian, etc.

I've used your suggestion a little which works, but there's multiple steps; overkill if there's only a single occurrence of the foreign word/phrase.

If the book has multiple languages, German, Russian, and English it gets fiddly.

What would be nice is an option in Spell Checker to insert <span lang= xx> ... </span) around the 'so called' mis-spelled word with the option to choose the language

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This tread was about something different

theducks' comment:

My one gripe with all of them. Flagging UK English spelling (US Locale PC)

seems to be how dictionary comments got started

I was only seeing if there was a way to operate within Spell Check more efficiently


PS: thanks for the tip about en-US-GB.txt