Improve Spellcheck for Multiple Files

[jmorales]

I've been launching "Check Spelling in Files" from the DITA Map Manager. It's a useful feature, but one thing about it is frustrating. The list of misspelled words is frozen in time, and you have to open the affected topics one at a time. This means that if there is a particular word that is flagged as misspelled in multiple topics, and you open the first topic and add that word to the dictionary, then the list of misspelled words in later topics continues to show all instances of that word. So you can end up opening topics where you have already added all the "misspelled" words while editing a previous topic.

It would be much easier if you could click Check Spelling for the currently opened file, and after checking the current file, it could offer to proceed to spell check the remaining topics in the order they appear in the ditamap. It should open the next topic that has a misspelled word. After you fix that topic, it should jump to the next topic with a misspelled word, and so forth. This is how spellcheck works in Author-it, for example.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.

[Radu]

Hi,

Thanks for the improvement request, I added an internal issue for it.
As possible workarounds:

- In the DITA Maps manager view there is a toolbar called "Open Map in editor with resolved topics". If you press it Oxygen should open the DITA Map with expanded topic references in the main editor area. You can use the manual spell checker (F7) on it. If you encounter a misspelled word you will need to right click the word and choose "Edit reference" in order to open the target topic and correct the problem.
- One extra possibility would be to save the entire results reported by the spell check in files to a separate file and use it as a basis for a custom dictionary: topic20897.html

Regards,
Radu

[jmorales]

Thanks, Radu. The "Open Map in editor with resolved topics" approach sounds like it would work very well. For some large books, the custom dictionary approach might be worthwhile too.

[jmorales]

Hi Radu,
I tried "Open Map in editor with resolved topics", and while it is useful for learning new words, it doesn't seem to let me correct any actual misspellings in that mode. So my original feature request would still be an improvement. Thanks.

[Radu]

Hi,

Right, as I previously mentioned for fixing content using the "Open Map in editor with resolved topics" you would have to open the target topic:

If you encounter a misspelled word you will need to right click the word and choose "Edit reference" in order to open the target topic and correct the problem.

It was just a workaround to give you a better idea about the overall context and it works decently if you just learn words, after you learn all the words you can again apply the Spell check in files for example.

Regards,
Radu