Question about dictionary and spelling checking on Affinity Publisher

[AlejandroJ]

I have Affinity Photo and Designer.
I have installed the trial version of Affinity Publisher in order to try it.

When intending to do a check spelling I get a popup windows that says: “El documento contiene idiomas (es-AR) para los que no hay ningún diccionario instalado” (which translated to English would be: “document contains languages (es-Ar) for which no dictionary is installed”). This, no matter if I wrote a text in Spanish, in English or wrote no text.

I tried to install (following the procedure suggested in an old thread in this same forum) the dictionaries I have for PagePlus 9 (which I have) but it did not work.
I tried to find how to solve my case problem (how to install an English and a Spanish dictionary) searching though the forum, and I founds lots of threads about the subject, but they give different solutions and recommendations. Some of the recomendations which I found are a bit confusing (or maybe too technical for my knowledge) as they suggest to download a dictionary from whichever web site mentioned by name or some other, but when I google the site (because it might be mentioned but no link indicated) I can’t find my whereabouts on from where an how to download a dictionary nor the ones I’m interested in.

Therefore, I am asking for help on how (and from where) can I download an English and a Spanish dictionary and how do I ought to install it.

Thanks

[AlejandroJ]

I have kept trying to find out how to install and make work a dictionary with no luck. I have as well followed the instructions on the Affinity Publisher’s Manual, but ended up with the same result (no result).

I have Affinity Design and Photo, and thought Publisher might have been a nice addition to the package as they all complement each other, not that I felt I needed Publisher. I still use Serif Page Plus 9, and it’s awesome and fulfils my needs in regards to what it does. If I can’t manage to install in Publisher the dictionaries I need (Spanish and English), it would be of very little use for me. It seems I might have to stick with Page Plus and forget about Publisher.

What intrigues me is, why PagePlus came with dictionaries and the spelling checking works flawlessly and Publisher doesn’t? And why is it so complicated to install a dictionary in Publisher? And I ought to think that it is being difficult not only for me, because as I have said in my previous post, I found (searching) lots of people asking the same as me in several threads at this same forum. Or maybe I’m the problem...

I think that programs ought to be intuitive and simple for those who want to use them for the main purpose for which they were created, many of whom might not necessarily be techno wizards nor techno orientated.

[walt.farrell]

On 4/23/2021 at 4:34 PM, AlejandroJ said:

I have as well followed the instructions on the Affinity Publisher’s Manual, but ended up with the same result (no result).

If you followed the instructions properly, and they did not help, then perhaps you are setting the Language used for spellchecking incorrectly.

If you can share a small sample document with us where spellchecking is not working, perhaps we can help you.

But if it is the problem just above, then you have your text "tagged" as being (I think) "Spanish as spoken in Argentina", and so you would need a dictionary specifically for that. Perhaps, instead, you should tag your text as being in Spanish, since there are Spanish dictionaries available.

[AlejandroJ]

Thank you Walt for answering. I don't need a dictionary to correct Spanish as spoken in Argentina, just one that corrects plain Spanish and another one that corrects English.

I would think that if I have the dictionary set to say Spanish, if I write in English, all words ought to be identified as wrongly spelled. That does not happen either.

I will attach a screen video recording of what happens when I write and try to have the text checked, with the program as is (as it installed itself with me doing nothing). This recording does not show anything of what I have tried to see if I could manage to make a spell checking work.

[Alfred]

There have been several previous reports of this confusing issue. It does seem to be a bit of a minefield!

 

[walt.farrell]

36 minutes ago, AlejandroJ said:

I don't need a dictionary to correct Spanish as spoken in Argentina, just one that corrects plain Spanish and another one that corrects English.

Really, what you need is to set the language for spell-checking, or get it to be set automatically for you.

Your system is configured, apparently, to be in Argentina. But you do not have a dictionary installed for Argentinian Spanish. The language is being automatically set as es-AR, which is not a usable language choice if you want spell-checking to occur. You can see this is happening by putting the text cursor in one of the words you typed, opening the Character panel, and looking at the Language section.

(We do not know why Affinity thinks the language should be es-AR, rather than es-ES, but it does. This is confusing, and may be a bug. But you need to work around it.)

Some possible workaround methods:

1. Install an es-ES dictionary as shown in the FAQ, but rename it to es-AR.
2. Change your Windows region setting to Spain, not Argentina. Or possibly change keyboard settings. (I have not tried either of these.)
3. Always use Text Styles for your text, and change the style named Base (if you use the default styles) to show a Spelling Language of Spanish, then re-save the current styles as default styles using the settings menu (hamburger menu) in the Text Styles panel.

[AlejandroJ]

Thank you Alfred and Walt. 

I tried the first option suggested by Walt. I downloaded from LibreOffice’s GitHub an es_AR dictionary (it does exist), and installed it and then tried downloading an es_ES dictionary and tried with it, and then I changed its name to es_AR and tried again, but the program always (as a default) returns to choose to look for a es_AR dictionary which it does not find (no matter if it is installed in the folder where it is supposed to be as indicated in the Manual).

Anyway, what you explained me, helped me to find my way to a solution. I found out that what I ought to do, is to change the language every time I open the program, and set it to “Español (España, internacional), and that works. No big deal.

Thanks

[walt.farrell]

14 hours ago, AlejandroJ said:

I found out that what I ought to do, is to change the language every time I open the program, and set it to “Español (España, internacional), and that works. No big deal.

Which language setting are you changing?

14 hours ago, AlejandroJ said:

downloaded from LibreOffice’s GitHub an es_AR dictionary (it does exist), and installed it

Thanks. I did not know that existed. If you installed that, it should have fixed your problem. My guess is that you might not have downloaded it properly, as downloading from GitHub is tricky and it's easy to get it in the wrong format if you miss following any of the instructions exactly. But if you have a solution that works for you, that's good.

[AlejandroJ]

Walt,
As you said, I found a solution that worked for me. Which does not mean that I prefer not to be in need of changing/switching the dictionary every time I open the program and open my first text frame. But I think I found a solution for that as well: I opened the program and created a new document, then I opened a text frame, I switched languages, deleted the text frame and after doing all that, I set this as my default (through “Edit” > “Defaults” > “Save”). It seems to be working.

Anyway, now that I managed to have my spelling corrected, I think I am tempted to buy Publisher as to complete the triad (Photo, Design and Publisher). Nevertheless, I will probably keep using PagePlus when in need, as I am very familiarized with it and I think it’s great and very powerful even for today’s standards.

Your guess is probably right. At first, I had difficulties even to find my way around GitHub’s web-site, so I won’t discard that I might have wrongly downloaded and/or installed the dictionary/dictionaries. For what you say and for my personal experience, not a very intuitive downloading and installing procedure I dare to say. Anyway, I won’t be needing to keep on trying now that I found an alternative solution to which was my problem.

The language settings I changed (or I am now changing) are the ones that ought to be changed. My fault on that one. I searched in Publisher’s Manual for “dictionary” and from there, under “installing Hyphenation dictionaries” where no reference is made on how to switch dictionaries. It happens to be that the explanation on how to do it, was under “character panel”, but it says there in the Manual that the “character panel allows you to apply local formatting to individual letters, words, sentences, and photographs as well as entire stories”, not mentioning that it is there that the option to switch dictionaries is, and it did not occur to me that such option would be under “character” (way down the scrollable options there), as a character is not even a word. Therefore, I searched within the program were my common sense dictated, under “edit” > “preferences”, within the “text” menu and everywhere else, except under “character”. So then I searched throughout the forum on how to do it and followed different/varied and sometimes complicated explanations on how to switch languages that were probably more related to switching to languages that were not included within the program (that do not directly come with the program). It is in the same place as in PagePlus, but PagePlus automatically set the dictionary to Spanish (to an “es-ES_tradnl” dictionary for what I have just checked) when I installed it, and I never needed to change it to a different language (all the work I have ever done with PagePlus has been in Spanish).

Nevertheless, I ought to recognize my own clumsiness. Sorry for that.

[Moonshot]

I have the same problem in Affinity Designer with German language. I get the error:

Quote

Document contains languages (en-DE) for which no dictionary is installed. 

This even happens when there are just 3 words defined as english (under the character tab). This is a bug! Or things are unusably overcomplicated...  

 

BR Peter

 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Moonshot said:

I have the same problem in Affinity Designer with German language. I get the error:

This even happens when there are just 3 words defined as english (under the character tab). This is a bug! Or things are unusably overcomplicated... 

 

If the words are specified as English then they are not the cause of the problem. The problem is the words which are specified as en-DE.

Do you also have Publisher, which makes diagnosis and cleanup easier? Can you provide the document, if you need assistance fixing it?

[Moonshot]

Many thanks Walt for offering me all the help. Now I managed to get rid of the error message by redefining all text section languages. Spell checking works now!

I didn't get hyphenation to work though. Under the Character Tab I defined the text language and hyphenation language. From there I found no further settings. There is nothing about hyphenation in the paragraph tab. What's the trick here?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Moonshot said:

I didn't get hyphenation to work though. Under the Character Tab I defined the text language and hyphenation language. From there I found no further settings. There is nothing about hyphenation in the paragraph tab. What's the trick here?

You're welcome.

Designer doesn't have the UI support to enable automatic hyphenation. That's done in the Paragraph panel, and the controls in the Paragraph panel for enabling automatic hyphenation are only exposed in Publisher. If you have Publisher, you can open your Designer document there and enable the hyphenation, then return it to Designer. Or just keep working in Publisher.

[Moonshot]

Thanks again Walt, luckily I have Publisher and found it there immediately.