Colon Causes Spellcheck Failure

[Dave Vector]

Hi, This issue was originally posted here in version 1.x of Affinity Publisher, but the issue persists with Affinity Publisher 2.0.4 on Windows 11 22H2, OS Build:22621.1555

 

ISSUE: Words ending in a colon in a header style, flag as misspelled, when they are, in fact, correctly spelled.

TO REPRODUCE:

• Copy some HTML text from the web, preferably a title with a colon and a line break right after.  I suspect it might have something to do with this source text. 
• Pasted it into a text frame in Affinity Publisher. 
• Mark the pasted text with a heading style. 
• Ensure Text > Spelling  > Check Spelling While Typing is on.

OBSERVATIONS:  in the Preflight panel, that there is a down arrow glyph (see image below)next to the colon.  Turning on Text > Show Special Characters (Alt+P) does not seem to reveal a difference between this arrow (new line glyph) and the normal "new paragraph" (backwards P) glyph.  Replacing it by deleting the paragraph symbol and typing a new one, does not fix it either.

WORK-AROUND:  adding another colon, then add a space, and then delete the second colon.

e.g.: right after the "g" in "lighting", add a second colon, (Lighting::) and then space (Lighting: :), then delete the right-most colon.

The end result is your headings will have an extra space after the colon and before the paragraph symbol, but since they are invisible, this should not be a critical document housekeeping issue.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR:  Spell checker will not flag words in a heading style, that precede colons or hidden html symbols, as misspelled.

Dave

[MikeTO]

Hi Dave, could you please upload a test document that demonstrates this behaviour?

Thanks

[Dave Vector]

Hello!

I think I figured out how to reproduce this 100%, however I included a sample file as well, just in case someone spots something I did wrong.

**** The issue seems to be a combination of a header style, a colon immediately following a word, and an anchor!  ****

I am not sure how the anchors got into my text, perhaps from copying the HTML text from the website?

• Make sure your spell check is turned on, of course.  Within the Base style, the Language for the spell check dictionary is English United States
• Turn on Text > Show Special Characters (Alt+P) 
• Turn on Text > Interactive > Show Anchors  (**This setting should also be under the View > menu, in my opinion, as it is very obscure**)

Interestingly, it does not seem to give a spelling error with other types of punctuation as shown in the screen capture below.  Note: I did not check every punctuation symbol...

Seems like something that should be fixed.  In life, nobody wants colon trouble 

Spell check colon trouble.afpub

[MikeTO]

This must be a Windows-specific issue as it's not flagged by the spelling checker for me in 2.0.4 or the latest 2.1 beta on macOS.

A similar issue with zero-width non joiners was just fixed in the 2.1 beta so this is along the same lines and wouldn't be too surprising. Perhaps somebody else can confirm it's a bug on Windows.

[walt.farrell]

With the false anchor present, I get the warning message from Preflight. With the false anchor deleted, or a space inserted in front of it, the message also goes away.

2.1.0.1781