Create new dictionary

[David Brear]

- for Affinity v2 apps. 

Is this possible? How?

I see a lot of advice about how to install existing Hunspell dictionaries. I have a text list of about a quarter million UK place names which I'd like to have Affinity spell check my document for. 

Is there perhaps an app which will produce a Hunspell dictionary from my list? Or if I download a (say) Spanish Hunspell dictionary can I just replace the text in the .dic file with my stuff, rename the file and use that?

This has been (sort of) discussed elsewhere but I felt it deserved its own topic.

Thanks.

[MikeTO]

20 hours ago, David Brear said:

Is this possible? How?

I see a lot of advice about how to install existing Hunspell dictionaries. I have a text list of about a quarter million UK place names which I'd like to have Affinity spell check my document for. 

Is there perhaps an app which will produce a Hunspell dictionary from my list? Or if I download a (say) Spanish Hunspell dictionary can I just replace the text in the .dic file with my stuff, rename the file and use that?

This has been (sort of) discussed elsewhere but I felt it deserved its own topic.

Yes it's possible.

On macOS, the Spanish .dic file is in a system folder and shouldn't be touched but you can add your own "es" user dictionary in /Users/username/Library/Spelling/. That's where macOS will store any words you add by clicking Learn. Your user dictionary will augment the existing system dictionary. Quit all your apps, create the file, or if it exists, edit it in a text editor. Add all the new words and alpha sort them. Save. Delete the three dynamic .dat files from the folder for safety (those are cache files). Restart macOS.

On Windows, user dictionaries go into the C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\2.0\Dictionaries\ folder, although you can change that with Settings. I don't know exactly what the file will be named but just Learn a word in Spanish and the file will be created for you. (I think you'd create a folder named es_ES and then create a file named es_ES.dic in there but I don't have a Windows machine to confirm.) Once you have the file, add the new words and alpha sort them. Save and restart Affinity.

Edited November 13, 2023 by MikeTO
typo

[David Brear]

Thanks Mike.

[anto]

16 годин тому MikeTO сказав:

the file will be created for you

I don't understand this. It did not create any file.

16 годин тому MikeTO сказав:

named es_ES.doc

or es_ES.dic?

[anto]

When I click - Learn spelling, where does this word goes?

[walt.farrell]

52 minutes ago, anto said:

When I click - Learn spelling, where does this word goes?

What OS do you use?

[anto]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

What OS do you use?

Win and Mac

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, anto said:

Win and Mac

On Windows: Learned words are saved in your dictionary.propcol file.

I'm not sure about Mac. I'll check a bit later, if no one else answers.

[anto]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

On Windows: Learned words are saved in your dictionary.propcol file.

How can I see what words I've added? Or how do I remove some?

[Pšenda]

13 minutes ago, anto said:

How can I see what words I've added?

propcol is a binary format, so it is unreadable by the user.

14 minutes ago, anto said:

Or how do I remove some?

Mark the added/learned word in the text and unlearn it.

[anto]

2 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

propcol is a binary format, so it is unreadable by the user.

Mark the added/learned word in the text and unlearn it.

Does this mean that if I use Windows and Mac, I have to do this work twice?

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, anto said:

Win and Mac

On Mac, the Learned words are in ~/Library/Spelling in a separate file for each language. But unlike Windows, the fileis plain-text, and you can edit it.

9 minutes ago, anto said:

Does this mean that if I use Windows and Mac, I have to do this work twice?

If you want to Learn the words, yes.

On the other hand, for a specific document you could instead Ignore the misspelled word. Ignored words are saved in the document, not in an external file, and so (for that single document) you could work on the document on either Windows or Mac and both will have the same list of Ignored words. But they will have separate lists of Learned words.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, anto said:

I don't understand this. It did not create any file.

or es_ES.dic?

For Spanish on macOS, it will create a file named "es" with no file extension.

For Spanish on Windows, I thought it would create a file named es_ES.dic (sorry, I typed .doc the first time) but as @walt.farrell has pointed out, learned words on Windows go into your dictionary.propcol file instead.

17 minutes ago, anto said:

Does this mean that if I use Windows and Mac, I have to do this work twice?

The Mac file is plain text so you can open it at any time and send the words to your Windows computer. Import the list as text into an Affinity text frame, and learn each of them to add them to your Windows dictionary. I don't know of a simple way to move the learned words on Windows to Mac.