[Publisher] Spell checking 'Auto' option

[EEvgeniy]

Hej! I have small issue with spell checker on MacOS — it looks strange when it knows some words, but the most of them not. Like there's a lack of dictionary. Where can I check and fix the issue?

[EEvgeniy]

Well, solved by myself. There was different language set in the spelling section of the Character tab. BTW, why isn't there any "auto" option?

[Dan C]

2 hours ago, EEvgeniy said:

Well, solved by myself. There was different language set in the spelling section of the Character tab.

Thanks for letting us know

2 hours ago, EEvgeniy said:

BTW, why isn't there any "auto" option?

Do you mean, a setting that would 'read' all active dictionaries so that you could type in multiple languages within one text frame and have the app 'crosscheck' spellcheck through these dictionaries?

I can't provide a reason for this not being in the Affinity app currently, but I can certainly move this post to the feedback section of our forums for our devs to see and consider adding this in a future version!

[carl123]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

you could type in multiple languages within one text frame and have the app 'crosscheck' spellcheck through these dictionaries?

I don't think that could ever work

BRITISH      USA
colour         color
flavour        flavor
humour       humor
labour          labor
neighbour   neighbor

How would the app know which one you wanted to use if both are processed as being the correct spelling? 

[Dan C]

9 minutes ago, carl123 said:

I don't think that could ever work

I agree - at least not without considerable machine learning/Ai that could scan the document to correctly set the dictionary - and even with this there would certainly still be confusion/mistakes with your example words etc.

I suspect this is one of the reasons this is not already a feature of Affinity - I simply wanted to double check this is what the customer was thinking of when asking for an 'Auto' mode

[carl123]

An auto (detect language) mode might work if the entire text frame was in one language but not a mix of languages

[Hilltop]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

An auto (detect language) mode might work if the entire text frame was in one language but not a mix of languages

Auto-detect works in MS-Word, even though not perfectly as it gets confused with two languages in one sentence. 

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

Auto-detect works in MS-Word, even though not perfectly as it gets confused with two languages in one sentence. 

How does it distinguish between UK English and US English (never mind Canadian English, Australian English, South African English, etc)? What does it say about ‘liquefy/liquify’?

[Hilltop]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

How does it distinguish between UK English and US English (never mind Canadian English, Australian English, South African English, etc)? What does it say about ‘liquefy/liquify’?

It doesn't, so that's another issue with MS-Word. The only thing that I could imagine is being able to set multiple spellcheckers per document (such as for various English spellings). To be able to check whether the author of the text didn't mix up spelling inadvertently, (s)he would have to activate/deactivate the various spellcheckers and then go through the text and check each positive. 

[Wosven]

Good old Character styles will do simply... and without confusion.

There's always an important part when writing/copy-reading where we need — or copy-editors — to read everything and manage such subtelities. It can be confusing when doing it as human, I'm not sure an AI would be able to manage such difficulties. 

[EEvgeniy]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for letting us know

Well, actually I wanted to delete the topic but haven't seen corresponding option... 🤭 But still who knows, maybe it will be more usefull now 😆

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Do you mean, a setting that would 'read' all active dictionaries so that you could type in multiple languages within one text frame and have the app 'crosscheck' spellcheck through these dictionaries?

This can be either all or preferred, why not?

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

BRITISH      USA
colour         color
flavour        flavor
humour       humor
labour          labor
neighbour   neighbor

I double that, but don't you think in case we mix English (whatever you want) and Russian — that will be much easier for AI to split text block into languages?

 

What I wanted to say with my post is that maybe we do not need 100% correct spelling check, but when 90% of the text is underlined with red is kinda frustrating. I totally agree that it would be tough task to separate British English from USA, but what about, for instance, German and Japanese? Dutch and Italian? I don't think Publisher should check every dictionary available when user can set preferred.

[MikeTO]

I am not a fan of Microsoft's automatic language detection, it is abysmally bad.

[garrettm30]

The builtin apps in MacOS do make use of an "automatic by language" setting. For example, below is a screenshot from the default Messages app. Notice that I have typed a sentence in English and one in French, and no word there is marked as misspelled. Then I typed a purposely misspelled word to confirm that spell check is turned on. Lastly, I tried a sentence with regional variation, and the spelling that did not conform to my spelling is here marked as misspelled.

I was curious about how it knows which variety of English I use, but I think it is actually just respecting my OS spelling settings, where I have set up only U.S. English and French (and Publisher likewise only offers me "English" and "Français" as the only language choices, so it does respect those same settings).

 

Since Affinity apps do use the OS spelling system, perhaps there is an OS feature that they have not tapped into yet. I personally would not be opposed to adding it to Publisher. It is very helpful in apps like Messages and Mail where I can just respond in either language without changing a setting, and since I use Postbox for email instead of Mail, where I have to select a specific language, I find I really miss it there. However, for Publisher, I don't think I would often use "auto language," because I prefer to define a specific language as part of text styles. It is a different work style than just casual texting. But that is just me: I can see how others may prefer to use auto by language.