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Dictionary failure


beast

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MacBook Pro Retina 15" (early 2013), MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

I suspect this issue predates v1.9.0. (Have no way to tell as no my documents won't even open in v1.8.3 after they've been save by v.1.9).

According to my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (Concise OED, 1992), the 'ize' have it. Words like 'recognize', 'initialize' and 'optimize' are not correctly spelt when ending in 'ise'.

Why does AffPub, and even this website, try to insist that they are?

I have set Preferences/Language to 'English' (not 'US English') and restarted both the app and the Mac. No joy.  There is no alternative dictionary.

I hope I can override the preflight complaints…

From Wikipedia

"The Oxford University Press states that the belief that ‑ize is an exclusively North American variant is incorrect. The Oxford spelling affects about 200 verbs, and is favoured on etymological grounds, in that ‑ize corresponds more closely to the Greek root, ‑izo, of most ‑ize verbs.  The suffix ‑ize has been in use in the UK since the 15th century, and is the spelling variation used in North American English."  It goes on to blame the French for the more recent use of 'ise'.

I do not plan to drop the 'u' in 'colour' any time soon (or use an 's' in 'defence') but there are times when our friends across the pond are right.  We should harmonize (sic) where we can.

AffPub should allow us the choice.  At least allow both variants through preflight (as long as they're consistent).  This is rather more important than it might seem.

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1 hour ago, beast said:

I have set Preferences/Language to 'English' (not 'US English') and restarted both the app and the Mac. No joy.  There is no alternative dictionary.

What have you specified in your Mac System preferences?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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As Walt suggests, I first suggest you look into your macOS System Preferences to confirm which variety of English is activated, as when only one is activated, it says simply “English” without specifying, and Publisher follows the system settings, only presenting you whatever you have activated at the system level. On my system, I have only US English activated, and it reports as simply “English.”

I explain more here:

If you do have the variety of English you desired selected, then the issue has to do with the dictionary itself. It was not Serif who decided what spellings to use.

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Using MacOS High Sierra, the only preference relevant is for Language and Region, where I have selected English (UK).

There is a Dictionary app, but that is sitting exactly where Aff Pub is, and offers both spellings but with preference for 'ize'. It claims to use the "Oxford Dictionary of English" from OUP, which must surely equate with the OED.

The MacOS spelling dictionary is not something easily messed with. (It reportedly uses a third party system with no simple replacement.)

Apple are clearly not interested and have ignore a number of demands to fix this. As a result, I don't think it unreasonable that Affinity incorporate a spelling dictionary and perhaps offer a choice. It cannot be that difficult to simply refer to a chosen source.

Control over the spelling dictionary employed is important for anyone publishing…, well anything really. Simply referring to the underlying system would be fine if both Mac and Windows offered reasonable control (i.e. choice of dictionary), but they don't.

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56 minutes ago, beast said:

As a result, I don't think it unreasonable that Affinity incorporate a spelling dictionary and perhaps offer a choice. It cannot be that difficult to simply refer to a chosen source.

Affinity allows you to install any compatible dictionary that you want, and allows you to specify where it should be used. You could even take a copy of the Hunspell English (UK) dictionary, rename it, and modify the spellings that it has that you do not like.

Or, you could use the existing Englsh (UK) dictionary and have Affinity "learn" the spellings you prefer, so they will be accepted as alternatives to the spellings already in the dictionary.

I do not see it as incumbent on Serif to provide a dictionary of their own for this.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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Thank you for your help.

Wrong is wrong and the 'ise' spellings are wrong. It should at least be possible to choose which to use from the top. If the underlying system gets it wrong, or provides no easy way to choose (remember, at least two hundred verbs plus the various tenses and associated nouns) then a publishing app must offer an alternative.

I have already hit the 'Learn' button more often than I can count, and face the likelihood that I've missed a few, having been denied the benefit of automation.

Despite being a former systems programmer, I have no intention of editing a hunspell library, which again exposes me to the risk of missing things.

I disagree. To serve the publishing community, it is definitely incumbent on the producer of a publishing app to get the automation of spelling checks right.

Sadly, I don't expect this to happen.

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You're welcome.

I'm quite sure it won't be recognized as a bug (which is where you've posted), but it might make a reasonable Feature Request (though probably unlikely to be implemented anytime soon).

We'll see what Serif have to say when they get to this bug report, but my guess will be that they move it to Feature Requests.

By the way, editing an existing English (UK) dictionary and changing ise to ize should be relatively simple. It can't be done with a global Find/Replace, as there are too many exceptions. But there are only 536 occurrences, and handling them individually should be a matter of an hour or so.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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3 hours ago, beast said:

It claims to use the "Oxford Dictionary of English" from OUP, which must surely equate with the OED.

the Dictionary of English is one volume the OED is twenty volumes.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think a different model for the dictionary needs to be used than the Hunspell. It's flagging the british spelling of jewellery as incorrect. Even though my system prefs are set to British English and publisher likewise. For a british company to favour american spelling.... tut tut tut 😂

 

ps. I've also tried the workaround posted elsewhere about downloading and adding a new dictionary. Still no joy

 

1959613537_Screenshot2021-03-08at09_23_37.png.eb2e32dc0c4517493d7d3d3c2471e66b.png

 

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1 hour ago, beast said:

I agree wholeheartedly.

UK English should mean the OED (the number or choice of volumes is irrelevant).

At the very least, this should be an option, especially from a British company (of which we can otherwise be very proud).

Even a simple word like jewellery is in the concise OED.

I respectfully disagree with Walt, it is not the onus of the user to fiddle around with dictionaries in the background, especially for English/French/German/Spanish... I could understand it if we were expecting Affinity Publisher to ship with dictionaries for Taushiro or Bahing.

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58 minutes ago, deebz said:

Even a simple word like jewellery is in the concise OED.

The Concise OED is not the dictionary that @Old Bruce mentioned above, though. He mentioned the Oxford Dictionary of English. What does that dictionary say about "jewellery"?

And, by the way, does it like "jewellery" better than "Jewellery", perhaps?

Also: If you're a Mac user, Publisher is possibly using the dictionary supplied by Apple.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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21 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The Concise OED is not the dictionary that @Old Bruce mentioned above, though. He mentioned the Oxford Dictionary of English. What does that dictionary say about "jewellery"?

And, by the way, does it like "jewellery" better than "Jewellery", perhaps?

Also: If you're a Mac user, Publisher is possibly using the dictionary supplied by Apple.

Not sure about the capitalisation of the word Walt. Will check. However this should be working on a case insensitive string match.

As for Mac dictionary. It isn’t being used as the Mac dictionary recognises both jewellery as being the British spelling suggesting or offering the American spelling as an alternative.

 

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3 minutes ago, deebz said:

affinity on right click wants to suggest American spelling

Interesting.

If you put the text cursor on that word, and look in the Character panel, Language, Spelling:

  1. What language is shown?
  2. If it just says "English", does the pull-down offer English (UK)?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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@walt.farrell you sir, know your oats and your publisher! 
 

it was set to language unknown (US) selected English and sure enough my problem went away!

weirdly this was an imported idml. On a fresh document the language defaults to British English. I should have known it was adobe’s fault! 😂

thanks Walt!

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You're welcome. Good to know what was going on, and that you have a solution :)

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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