Dictionaries support

[Ixolite]

I can see that there are only couple languages available for spellcheck and hyphenation. What is the plan to support others? Are these going to be hard-coded or will there be option to add new ones?

[Dave Harris]

On Mac we use the operating system for spell checking, and you can add new languages using the Apple mechanism. On Windows we use Hunspell, and you can add your own dictionaries by putting them in the right place in the file system. (I don't recall where that is off-hand, sorry.)

We use Hunspell dictionaries for hyphenation on both platforms. On Mac the user-defined ones live below ~user~/Library/Spelling - each language gets its own folder with a name like en_UK.

[Ixolite]

Thanks! It's not very intuitive but it works.

[Bluebug]

Maybe I'm dense, but where and how does one get and install the necessary files? For example; I'd need Dutch spelling and hyphenation settings available...

[Ormhaugen]

You can find dictionaries here https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries

In Win install them under ...C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher Public Beta\Resources\Dictionaries

Worked for me

 

[TomGerritzen]

The preferred way of course would be to install the dictionaries in a separate folder outside of X:\Program Files\... Use the preference pane Tools to add this additional dictionary folder. Restart Affinity Publisher as advised.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Ormhaugen said:

In Win install them under ...C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher Public Beta\Resources\Dictionaries

Or install them in the directory listed in Preferences, Tools. By default that's C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries but it can be changed, as @TomGerritzen mentions. (Note: You cannot add an additional location, but you can change the default location for user-added dictionaries.)

[TomGerritzen]

You have to be careful though where you get the dictionaries. Not all Hunspell language packs are created equal. Some work, some don't. The ones from LibreOffice didn't work for me, the ones that shipped as part of Adobe InDesign did. Kind of ironic. Maybe the folks from Serif can provide the proper downloads in the future.

[walt.farrell]

40 minutes ago, TomGerritzen said:

The ones from LibreOffice didn't work for me,

Interesting. Have you tried the ones from wooorm or from Thunderbird?

[TomGerritzen]

I downloaded a few from Github as mentioned earlier in this thread: https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries. The names of the folder nl_NL, pl_PL et cetera are apparently being recognized by Publisher, so I can choose those languages for the spell checker. But then all words are marked as wrong and no suggestions appear.

[pdussart]

I did the same exercise with a French dictionary from Github. Also problems.

Process:

- download dictionary from Github

- copy file into Affinity (as per previous mails)

- reboot

- Set Affinity without any form of spelling check

- Open Affinity. Load a file with a 100% correctly spelled text

- Affinity shows the text not underlined, as spelling check is off (this seems OK)

- apply spelling check

- no underline (everything seems OK, i.e. the French words are recognised as correct)

- change one word so that it is mispelled (this word only is now underlined, which is OK)

- if you spell correctly this word, all words are now shown as incorrect. The English spelling check seem to take-over the French one.

Installing a dictionnary file is not enough.

Note: In the Document Preferences Auto correct you can select a short list of languages, you can select French and save this option, but if you go back to this screen, it shows English again, regardless of your previous setup in French. This is may be the problem. All this despite the Additional dictionary folder of Tools still points to the French dictionary, ...

 

[Ixolite]

I have no issues with the dictionary.

I've added a new folder in default location:
C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher Public Beta\Resources\Dictionaries\

For Polish I copied spelling dictionary from https://sjp.pl/slownik/ort/ (it includes 2 files: pl_PL.aff and pl_PL.dic)
Then I learned about LibreOffice github repository (https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/archive/master.zip), grabbed the hyphenation dictionary from it and added it to the same folder.

Both spelling and hyphenation are working as expected.

[pdussart]

Dear, 

the problems of French dictionary mentioned above seem to have disappeared with 1.7.0.58

Regards, Philippe

[Harja Blok]

 

Geacht forum:

At first I had a problem with the Dutch SpellCheck and Hyphenation in Publisher Beta but solved it.

C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\nl_NL with the three files nl_NL dic works well for Affinity Designer (no hyphenation) but not (yet?) for Publisher.

Spell Check (Dutch) did not work in Publisher; no Dutch language mentioned in the spell checker (it showed German; English UK and English US; Spanish Int.; French; Italian; Portuguese Braz.). Hyphenation: the same languages plus Latin (!) but no Dutch.

I found that pasting the map «nl-NL» with:
hyph_nl_NL.dic
nl_NL.aff
nl_NL.dic 
straight into «C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher Public Beta\Resources\Dictionaries» next to the languages above mentioned works very well; no problems with spell check and hyphenation any more.

Congratulations with a great program ! I worked in the late seventies with Quadritek and Compugraphic; switched to Windows: Aldus PageMaker, Adobe Pagemaker; Quark XPress; Indesign (CS2); Serif PagePlus up to X9 and I am now very happy with Affinity Publisher.

Affinity Publisher Public Beta 1.7.0.249
Windows 10 Home 1809 | 8 Gb RAM

Harja Blok 
Doesburg - The Netherlands

[Pšenda]

On 3/2/2019 at 11:28 PM, Harja Blok said:

Affinity Publisher Public Beta 1.7.0.249
Windows 10 Home 1809 | 8 Gb RAM

Harja Blok 
Doesburg - The Netherlands

It is good to put this information into your profile. This will be available for each of your posts.

[Vincent Steinmetz]

On 9/3/2018 at 7:29 PM, Ixolite said:

I have no issues with the dictionary.

I've added a new folder in default location:
C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher Public Beta\Resources\Dictionaries\

For Polish I copied spelling dictionary from https://sjp.pl/slownik/ort/ (it includes 2 files: pl_PL.aff and pl_PL.dic)
Then I learned about LibreOffice github repository (https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/archive/master.zip), grabbed the hyphenation dictionary from it and added it to the same folder.

Both spelling and hyphenation are working as expected.

Thanks for the (https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/archive/master.zip) link. It works!

[hallstein]

I had the same question regarding norwegian, which comes in two flavours, nb and nn. What worked was the dictionary files from Thunderbird mentioned earlier in the thread. The xpi file can be renamed as zip, and then opens in any zip-opening program. The file structure and size was quite different from the ones in libre and apache office. The dic. file was about 15 times as big, so there seems to be significant differences. Anyhow, it worked flawlessly, installed in a folder Affinity\Publihser\Resources\Dictionaries\nb-NO

 

Hallstein

Edited March 12, 2021 by hallstein

[MBweb]

I simply cannot get this to work on OSX 15 Big Sur. I have tried the following steps but continously get the error message:
Unsupported Languages: Document contains languages (en-DK) for which no dictionary is installed

• Downloaded hunspell OXT da-DK from Github.
• renamed to .zip, and unzipped the files.
• copied da_DK.aff, da_DK.dic and hyph_da-DK to users/me/library/spelling/ restarted computer and Affinity Publisher - same error
• changed underscores to scores in the filenames - restarted AFP same error
• created a folder called da-DK in Spelling and copied the files to that - restarted AFP same error
• changed scores back to underscores in filenames in the folder - restarted AFP same error

Does anybody have suggestions?

in hope
Morten

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MBweb said:

I simply cannot get this to work on OSX 15 Big Sur. I have tried the following steps but continously get the error message:
Unsupported Languages: Document contains languages (en-DK) for which no dictionary is installed

• Downloaded hunspell OXT da-DK from Github.
• renamed to .zip, and unzipped the files.
• copied da_DK.aff, da_DK.dic and hyph_da-DK to users/me/library/spelling/ restarted computer and Affinity Publisher - same error
• changed underscores to scores in the filenames - restarted AFP same error
• created a folder called da-DK in Spelling and copied the files to that - restarted AFP same error
• changed scores back to underscores in filenames in the folder - restarted AFP same error

Does anybody have suggestions?

 

Your problem is that you have text "tagged" as being in "English as spoken in Denmark". That problem is not solved (usually) by installing a dictionary, but by changing the language tagging for that text.

You can change the language tag for text using either the Language settings in the Character panel or in the Text Style you have associated with the text. If you use the Character panel you need to make sure you have the text selected when you make the change.

(You probably could solve it by installing a dictionary, but you would need to install a copy of the English dictionary (with renamed files) into a directory named en-DK. Probably better to fix the text mislabeling )

[MBweb]

thanks again Walt - i'm getting closer now 👍