publisher V2: Sync dictionary between pc and notebook

[hr.mu]

I am writing a book on my pc using publisher V2. My text lists a lot of words which are marked by the spellchecking. I regularly use the option 'learn' to extend the local dictionary.

I now copied the publisher-document together with all referenced images to my notebook. I could at once open the document and the text including all images were displayed correctly. However, all my words which I already corrected by the 'learning'-option on my pc are now again marked by the spellchecking.

Is there a way to copy / sync my extended local dictionary to my notebook? I cannot find my extended dictionary on my pc.

Best regards

Harald

[walt.farrell]

When you Learn a word it goes into a file local to your system, in a format that only Publisher knows. Though it might be possible to copy that file from one PC to another, it's a single file and not something you can merge. So you would replace everything you've learned on one machine with the items you've learned on the other, which also isn't good.

As an alternative, don't Learn the misspelled words. Use the Ignore option, instead. Words you Ignore are remembered within the document, and just for that specific document. So, when you take the document to another system they'll be ignored there, too.

[laurent32]

I am wondering if it works like that on macOS ?

The dictionary might be linked to macOS system and might follow one's apple account on different computers ?

[walt.farrell]

Good question, @laurent32. If you have two Macs I suppose you could try  

[laurent32]

Interesting… looks like it does synch across apps on the same Mac (for example between Affinity Publisher and Pages) but not between computer (with same Mac account)… Too bad…

I tested macOS Ventura 13.1 against macOS Big Sur 11.7.2 ; I might have missed some preference somewhere ?

I did find an old post :

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252638504

But the major link is broken…

[MikeTO]

6 minutes ago, laurent32 said:

Interesting… looks like it does synch across apps on the same Mac (for example between Affinity Publisher and Pages) but not between computer (with same Mac account)… Too bad…

Affinity uses the standard macOS spelling system so learning words in Affinity will learn them in all apps*. Your spelling dictionary is not stored in iCloud so it won't be synced between devices.

*By default, the spelling dictionary language is set to "Automatic by Language" so learned words added in apps such as TextEdit, Mail, and Pages will be added to /users/<username>/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary regardless of whether your computer is set to US English, UK English, German, or any other language. This dictionary is combined for all computer languages. Affinity saves learned words to language-specific dictionaries, for example /users/<username>/Library/Spelling/en_CA for Canadian English, so it can be confusing that learning a word in Pages doesn't make it appear as learned in Affinity. You should do is change this macOS setting to match the language you normally use so that Affinity and all of Apple's own apps are using the same spelling dictionary.

Also note that there are major bugs in Apple's spelling system - it gets overwhelmed by long documents and words will be shown as spelling errors even when they're in the dictionary, not be flagged when they are spelling errors, be missing the learn and ignore options when right clicked, etc. I thought these were Affinity's bugs but after testing we learned that they were Apple's bugs.

[laurent32]

37 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You should do is change this macOS setting to match the language you normally use so that Affinity and all of Apple's own apps are using the same spelling dictionary

Thanks Mike, i understand.

But then i guess i will have another problem : a specific one…

If i tell the computer to use the French dictionnary then it won't be able to correct me when i type in English…

And forums (especially technical forums) are often only en English so i guess i can't change to French dictionnary…

I might just be forced to stick to "Automatic by Language" ?

And if so, i'll have to follow 2 personnal dictionnaries, one for apple products and one for affinity products ?

Am i correct there ?

[MikeTO]

It turns out that Apple has made a nice improvement to spelling in the Ventura upgrade. The Spelling and Grammar window which is available from Pages, Mail, TextEdit, Notes, Safari, etc., now lets you choose the language. In the past whatever you chose in System Preferences (now System Settings) was it.

So now it's entirely up to you. Just know that when you do use Automatic in another app that you'll be adding words to a dictionary that Affinity will never use.

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, MikeTO said:

a nice improvement to spelling in the Ventura upgrade.

That is here in OS 11.7 

[loukash]

19 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Apple has made a nice improvement to spelling in the Ventura upgrade

You mean this window?

That's from El Capitan. Looks the same to me.
Using custom Český spel čekr here.

[loukash]

On 1/17/2023 at 3:30 PM, laurent32 said:

synch across apps on the same Mac (for example between Affinity Publisher and Pages) but not between computer (with same Mac account)…

Just recently I switched from Dropbox (because they dropped support for El Capitan, so bye bye) to pCloud.
The benefit of pCloud is that you can sync any given folder on your hard drive you want (unlike Dropbox which requires everything be placed into the Dropbox folder for syncing).
So you could e.g. make your ~/Library/Spelling folder sync via pCloud on both Macs.
I'm now using the same pCloud method to sync e.g. my Affinity folder with presets and test docs between my Mac and our iPad which runs under my wife's Apple ID and is thus "unsyncable" via iCloud (the latter being broken on El Capitan anyway). Works great.

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, loukash said:

I'm now using the same pCloud method to sync e.g. my Affinity folder with presets and test docs between my Mac and our iPad

I presume you are careful not to have the Affinity applications running at the same time on both systems? I don't think the application would like having one of its files changed by another program while it was running. That could lead to corruption.

[laurent32]

24 minutes ago, loukash said:

pCloud

Very interesting to have paths between apple accounts…

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

careful not to have the Affinity applications running at the same time on both systems

For sure Walt ! And not only for Affinity files… I wonder how pCloud handles that ? Dropbox and iCloud are not too bad at it…

[loukash]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

I presume you are careful

You presume correctly:
I'm one of those guys who know what they are doing. That's why I'm doing things to my Macs that no one should even dream of trying to do at home on their dad's computer…  

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I don't think the application would like having one of its files changed by another program while it was running.

Those are not the Application Support folders.
I'm syncing those between Macs or boot partitions as well, but by other means: ChronoSync app. Of course, while syncing such content, all affected apps must not run.

[loukash]

Just now, laurent32 said:

I wonder how pCloud handles that ?

It does what you tell it to do, and it doesn't do what you tell it not to do:

Pretty clever. Especially if you know what you're doing, of course.  

[laurent32]

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

It does what you tell it to do, and it doesn't do what you tell it not to do

And… does it tell you everything it does ??? nothing hidden ?

[loukash]

1 hour ago, laurent32 said:

does it tell you everything it does ???

It syncs what I've included and doesn't sync what I've excluded.
Some of the excluded items were already there as defaults. I've removed some and added some more.

It doesn't sync Finder labels (I mean the true "old school" labels, not "tags") which sucks a bit as I rely on them a lot. 
Since I've included ".ds_store" files, it should sync Finder comments. But I haven't tested it yet.

1 hour ago, laurent32 said:

nothing hidden ?

Little Snitch tells me the all the rest.  

[MikeTO]

8 hours ago, loukash said:

You mean this window?

That's from El Capitan. Looks the same to me.
Using custom Český spel čekr here.

I stand corrected. I didn't realize you could change the spelling language through the dialog prior to Ventura.

A good point to note though is that spelling will always default to the computer's language if you choose Automatic - I was adding words to the generic dictionary with Apple Notes before I figured that out and then had to add them to the specific dictionary in Affinity.