APu for iPad: additional hyphenation and spellchecking dictionaries

[Fantomas.CZ]

Hi everyone, especially Affinity staff,

is there a way to install custom hyphenation and/or spellchecking dictionaries for the iPad version of Affinity Publisher? And if not (we would have probably found it by now), are you working on it? Is there any - however remote - introduction plan? 

About a month ago, I posted this question, but didn't get any answer whatsoever on this part. Could someone from Affinity please read this and give me an honest reply? As this is the only support channel, it would be quite fair of you... I understand that you may have different feature introduction plan that may not suit me, but does suit many other users, but please, tell me, whether you are going to address this issue, or whether I should look for a different solution.

Because working hyphenation is a crucial component of any DTP software, isn't it? And there are a lot of people that publish in other languages than English... (I need Latin and Czech, for example)

Thanks a lot, anyway, I'm so glad that you have finally introduced the iPad version! (although in current state quite unusable for me...)

 

[StudioJason]

To install other Dictionaries, go to Settings > General > Dictionaries 

Should be a huge list of other Language Dictionaries to choose from. Tap on any one them and should start downloading.

For any specific words and such…in most cases like Pages at least, can highlight word etc.and Learn Spelling to add to a Dictionary….might work for hyphenations etc. 

 

Don’t know  …and probably not able to add to the actual Settings…but there are some Apps in AppStore to build your own Dictionary.

Build your own Dictionary - AppStore

 

[Fantomas.CZ]

14 hours ago, StudioJason said:

To install other Dictionaries, go to Settings > General > Dictionaries

Are you aware that this installs just dictionaries for translation? So that doesn't concern this issue at all.

To install spelling dictionaries, you have to install a corresponding keyboard. However, as you may have guessed, Latin keyboard is nowhere to be found in the iPadOS system. Hence the need of additional spelling dictionaries. 

Also, these dictionaries don't have hyphenation. Maybe some of them do, but surely not all of them. Czech for example, someone on this forum says Swedish either... Hence the need of additional hyphenation dictionaries. A funny thing: there is some kind of hyphenation that works on languages that don't have their corresponding keyboard language installed. It works fairly well, but not as well as a dedicated hyphenation dictionary, which is an issue for any serious work. And also, this generic hyphenation doesn't work on languages that do have their corresponding keyboard. We need a working solution compatible with the desktop installations, like in the case of fonts.

I mean, thanks for reply, but believe me, I did my research, and if the solution was to be found on the internet, I would have already got it. 

So, I really need a reaction from Affinity here.

[StudioJason]

6 hours ago, Fantomas.CZ said:

Are you aware that this installs just dictionaries for translation? So that doesn't concern this issue at all.

To install spelling dictionaries, you have to install a corresponding keyboard. However, as you may have guessed, Latin keyboard is nowhere to be found in the iPadOS system. Hence the need of additional spelling dictionaries. 

Also, these dictionaries don't have hyphenation. Maybe some of them do, but surely not all of them. Czech for example, someone on this forum says Swedish either... Hence the need of additional hyphenation dictionaries. A funny thing: there is some kind of hyphenation that works on languages that don't have their corresponding keyboard language installed. It works fairly well, but not as well as a dedicated hyphenation dictionary, which is an issue for any serious work. And also, this generic hyphenation doesn't work on languages that do have their corresponding keyboard. We need a working solution compatible with the desktop installations, like in the case of fonts.

I mean, thanks for reply, but believe me, I did my research, and if the solution was to be found on the internet, I would have already got it. 

So, I really need a reaction from Affinity here.

No, just trying to be friendly and helpful, but thanks for clearing up exactly the type of person I’m dealing with. Enjoy yourself.

[NathanC]

Hi @Fantomas.CZ,

Apologies on the late reply, currently it's not possible to install custom hyphenation/spelling dictionaries on the iPad apps, as it uses the built in IOS dictionary system, so it's not possible to install alternative files.

This is something that has been raised internally previously that the development team are aware of, so this could be implemented later down the line. However this isn't something I can provide a timescale/ETA for.

[Fantomas.CZ]

Hi @NathanC,

any news concerning this topic? 

As the main use of Affinity Publisher is typesetting longer texts, it is really necessary to have the identical hyphenation tools for all the platforms, otherwise the iPad version is of a very limited use. I guess you understand, why it is so important for me and I believe, not only for me... Thank you!

[NathanC]

Hi @Fantomas.CZ, 

No news yet unfortunately, It is logged as an improvement internally with the developers. We don't typically provide timescales as I can't advise on how long the development and testing cycle will take for each Issue/Feature/Improvement.

[Fantomas.CZ]

Hi @NathanC,

any news concerning this topic? Now we have another Beta phase, so it would be fitting and very helpful, as without the custom Hyphenation dictionary, the App is next to worthless...

[NathanC]

Hi @Fantomas.CZ,

Not anything new to share sadly, I'm now watching the improvement internally so if there's any change I'll post back on this thread.

[MikeTO]

Could a few more hyphenation dictionaries be bundled in the app in addition to the current seven? The size of the package is probably a concern though.

[Fantomas.CZ]

On 11/15/2023 at 11:13 PM, MikeTO said:

Could a few more hyphenation dictionaries be bundled in the app in addition to the current seven? The size of the package is probably a concern though.

Well, the size of Latin hyphenation dictionary (the useful version, not the standard LibreOffice version) is 33 kB. The Czech hyphenation dictionary is about 20 kB. The size of the Affinity Publisher iPad app is 1.6 GB. Is size really the main concern? I mean, even if all the available hyphenation dictionaries were included, we wouldn't really feel it...

@NathanC

Please, if you decide to include a Latin hyphenation dictionary, use the hyphen-la version by Claudio Beccari (ideally the liturgical pattern), distributed under the MIT license. There is another version packaged with LibreOffice spell checker (which is good), that doesn't consider accented Latin texts, and therefore it's next to useless for most modern use cases. You can tell the difference quite easily, the hyphen-la version has about 33 kB, the useless LibreOffice version about 2 kB...

And Czech hyphenation (and spelling) dictionary would be nice too, the widely available LibreOffice version is fine for both.

Thank you!

[Fantomas.CZ]

@NathanC

Any chance of this feature getting into the 2.4 or 2.5 version? Thanks!

[Fantomas.CZ]

Any news here? By the merger with Canva, we were promissed expedited development, and as this is an important topic, I need to ask...

Thanks for any reply!

[MikeTO]

While it would be good to bundle more spelling and hyphenation dictionaries for Mac and Windows to avoid users having to figure this out on their own and then ask for tech support, I think this is a real issue for Publisher on iPad. Not only can you not hyphenate many languages on iPad, the lack of hyphenation means hyphenated documents would flow differently on desktop vs. iPad for many common languages such as Dutch, Danish, Czech, Polish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, and Greek.

[Fantomas.CZ]

Exactly! Because Publisher on iPad is practically unusable for any real work, as the text layout without hyphenation is completely different. 

I'm quite surprised that this didn't get more focus from the beginning. Of course, many APu for iPad users may use English, German or other languages supported by Apple, but I think it's necessary to be able to use the identical hyphenation dictionaries for all platforms, no matter what Apple decides to offer as standard.