How to install Finnish language support for Affinity Publisher?

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Hi!

I bought Affinity Publisher to replace Microsoft Publisher. But how can I install the Finnish language support?

When creating large publications in Finnish, the language support is quite crucial for a publication software. Microsoft Publisher has good Finnish language support, but how about Affinity Publisher?

I found some information about installing an Open Office hyphenation language pack. But as far as I can see, there is no open office hyphenation dictionary for Finnish.

Best regards,
Tommi

[Patrick Connor]

@Tommi Gustafsson

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums

there is an answer here for method, and the Finnish files are as you say hard to come by.

 

You could use the suggestion here (from a few years ago) that says these files worked for them. However take care as from that linked thread above Affinity can currently crash if the installed files are not compatible.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

You could use the suggestion here (from a few years ago) that says these files worked for them. However take care as from that linked thread above Affinity can currently crash if the installed files are not compatible.

I've read elsewhere that Voikko (which they ended up using) is a completely different spellchecker from Hunspell and its dictionaries are not compatible.

[Patrick Connor]

Thanks Walt, back to square one. Sorry @Tommi Gustafsson

[Tommi Gustafsson]

After reading a bit about Voikko, it seems that Hunspell is inadequate at handling Finnish grammar or something like that, wherefore there is no Hunspell dictionary for Finnish.

https://voikko.puimula.org/architecture.html

Edited July 8, 2019 by Tommi Gustafsson

[Patrick Connor]

Oh, that's not good news. Sorry I was not aware of that.

[walt.farrell]

25 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Thanks Walt, back to square one. Sorry @Tommi Gustafsson

Not quite square one. From the Serif forums I found this one:

 

The included file needs a couple of changes, they said. I'm looking at that now.L

Good news: Here is a Finnish Hunspell dictionary (including hyphenation):

fi_FI.zip

(This is slightly modified from the version in the post I referenced. I removed the word CHARSET as he said was necessary. Spellchecking still did not work. I then reencoded everything as UTF-8, which still did not work.)

Though Publisher accepts it, and it doesn't crash spell-checking, it doesn't seem to work as all my sample Finnish text gets red underlines. Perhaps that other user could help, as they seem to have it working.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

And, in regards to Hunspell not working for Finnish: Other discussions in the Hunspell forums indicate that it can work, and the issues that the Voikko team describes are merely deficiencies in the coding of the Hunspell Finnish dictionary.

I'm not sure who to believe.

[Patrick Connor]

@Jon P

could we report this Finnish file attachment to development . I'm not sure they will know how to fix it, but they may want to look.

[artokmt]

I have got hyphenation working in Publisher in Finnish. But Spellcheck is problem..

[Patrick Connor]

2 minutes ago, artokmt said:

I have got hyphenation working in Publisher in Finnish. But Spellcheck is problem..

Great are your files the same as in Walt's attachments? Where did you source them and are they legally sharable?

[Tommi Gustafsson]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Though Publisher accepts it, and it doesn't crash spell-checking, it doesn't seem to work as all my sample Finnish text gets red underlines. Perhaps that other user could help, as they seem to have it working.

Yes. I get the same experience with these files. Finnish text gets red lines.

[artokmt]

 

8 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Great are your files the same as in Walt's attachments? Where did you source them and are they legally sharable?

Same that Walt's attachments:  fi_FI.aff, fi_FI.dic, hyph_fi_FI.dic. I remember that I have to delete something text one of these files before it works.

[Tommi Gustafsson]

But the spell checking does not work for you either?

[artokmt]

Not working spellchecking.

[Fixx]

I had Finnish hyphenation working at the Publisher beta stage, but then I placed these files within Publisher app package. Now I placed these to /Users/Fixx/Library/Dictionaries/fi_FI (is this correct place?).

Spellchecker works, hyphenation does not. And hyphenation is more important of these two.Spelling has the right language "Suomi" but hyphenation list has it not. 

It is vital to get hyphenation working. Using english hyphenation does not hyphenate enough, while it is mostly correct it leaves a lot white spots to text columns...

About Voikko: Voikko is the current premiere spelling checker for Finnish language. It is not Apple produce but created by finnish volunteers (mostly). It handles Finnish morphology better than Hunspell. Hunspell works though well enough for hyphenation, mostly.

[Tommi Gustafsson]

So the spell checker works on Mac but not on Windows? And hyphenation works on Windows but not on Mac? :-/

Edited July 9, 2019 by Tommi Gustafsson

[artokmt]

Maybe. I use Windows..

[Jon P]

Hi,

So there are some differences between how you install hunspell dictionaries for Mac/Windows, since we use the Mac spelling dictionaries (which support adding custom hunspell dictionaries).

 

On Mac:

Spelling dictionaries may already be available but not active. Check by navigating to:

System Preferences >  Keyboard > Text > Spelling > at the bottom of the drop list "Set up…”. Then check the required language if available. If it is checking it and restarting Publisher will suffice.

If the required language is not available, standard Hunspell dictionaries can be installed for the system spelling to use. These consist of two files, one names xx_XX.dic and one named xx_XX.aff. Copy the .dic and.aff files to the ~/Library/Spelling folder.

Having done this the language should become available to be selected in System Preferences >  Keyboard > Text > Spelling as above. Once checked here they will become available in Publisher.

Any changes to dictionaries require an App restart.

On Mac Hyphenation dictionaries can be installed in a similar way but the must be installed in a subfolder. Navigate to ~/Library/Spelling/as above and make a subfolder with a name in the format xx-XX (substituting xx-XX for the locale id). The dictionary comes as a single file with a name in the format hyph_xx_XX.dic. This file should be copied to the subfolder.

 

On Windows:

Edit > Preferences > Tools will show where additional dictionaries are installed, and change be changed/opened. Similar to the above if you create a locale folder xx-XX and paste the aff/dic files for spelling and hyphenation in here the app should pick them up.

 

Regarding the Finnish dictionaries above. I've got the app to pick these up for both Mac and Windows (although my Mac already had a Finnish dictionary). I can see spelling seems to be underlining Finnish words using the dictionary and am looking into this (I'm not a hunspell expert at all and the structure of the dictionary differs from what I'm used to)

[Fixx]

Hey, that helped. Finnish hyphenation works now. (Finnish spelling stopped working but that does not matter,.)

[Shrike]

Has there been some changes on latest Publisher, as Finnish hyphenation is not working anymore (not even selectable)? Spelling is still available in Finnish.

EDIT: Actually, I think I had updated both Mac OS and Publisher the the latest ones. I had to re-create ~/Library/Spelling/fi-FI/ and copy hyph_fi_FI.dic file there. Now it works again.

[johanw]

Hey, is there coming update were is that Finnish hyphenation? Only reason I cant use publisher. I tried to read instructions, I see "Suomi" there, but hyphenation is not working. I have Catalina in my MBP,  MacPro has Sierra.  Any way I'm very  happy with Affinity software. Photo and Designer are killer softwares. Publisher is also great, innovative and how you can jump between programs.

BTW. I have in my MacPro two systems in different HardDrives and the other system will be "Adobe free" dedicated to Affinity (capture one for raw, XnView for media browsing). I've already testes and it's much faster. I totally pissed of Adobe, e.g. Bridge is just crashing and there are too many demons (daemons etc.) going on and eating my processors. 
... also wondering is affinity going to do any media Browser /RAW developer.

https://www.facebook.com/johannes.wilenius/posts/10218390842954302

https://www.facebook.com/johannes.wilenius/posts/10218434511165980

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