Spell check - use two dictionaries in parallel

[art]

As is most common in software documentation in Germany, there is a large percentage of English terms used to describe programming language elements. This leads to a situation where upon activating the spell checker, English terms are marked as unknown. Oh, the dread of making the maching "learn" all of these terms manually.

Wouldn't it be nice to use two dictionaries in parallel, the German and the English one? Heck, perhaps there is already a way. I'd be glad to learn about that way.

Aaron.

[bogdan]

Hi Aaron,

Yes, there is a way to do this. You have to tell oXygen what language was used for writing a certain fragment of content.

First, go to oXygen Options->Preferences menu. Use the filter to look for Spell check preferences page. Set the default language (dictionary) and check the Use "lang" and "xml:lang" attributes option.

Then, for every piece of content that is written in a language different from the default one, set the xml:lang attribute to that language ISO code (for example de for German), like in the following small DITA example:

Code: Select all

<p>

 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.<ph xml:lang="de">Der schnelle braune Fuchs springt über den faulen Hund.</ph>

</p>

Regards,
Bogdan

Bogdan Goreci
<oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
http://www.oxygenxml.com

[art]

Hi Bogdan,

I appreciate the pace at which you replied to my request.

I am afraid though that your suggestion will prove impractical for the project at hand, possibly for all projects that I am aware of. Authors are subject matter experts, they are supposed to focus on contents while writing. Asking them to "set the xml:lang attribute for every piece of content that is written in a language different from the default one" would be calling for an outrage.

Your suggestion seems to indicate that there is no built-in option for Oxygen. Perhaps the following work around is feasible: Manually add the contents of the installation supplied file en_GB.dic to the contents of the user supplied dictionary file de.tdi. What's your opinion on that?

Regards, Aaron

[bogdan]

Hi Aaron,

The .tdi file is where oXygen keeps all learned words for a specific dictionary. Your solution seems like a hack and I would not recommended it.

I mean, it might work, but I am worried about performance issues (I think the .tdi file was not designed to take that much load). Also oXygen might mix words from the two languages in the list of suggested words (right click on a misspelled word to display it).

I agree that setting the xml:lang attribute to some scattered English words or phrases might seem difficult to your authors, but be assured that this is the XML-correct way to do it.

Regards,
Bogdan

Bogdan Goreci
<oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
http://www.oxygenxml.com