How to enable spellchecker?

[Shohreh]

Hello,

Using the default settings, no wordlist is displayed when trying to spellcheck an EPUB file (in French, and in Sigil 2.3.0 FWIW.)

What do I need to do to enable this feature?

Thank you.

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Edit: It might not be enough, but content.opf's metadata header contains "<dc:language>fr-FR</dc:language>".
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Edit: The "hunspell_dictionaries" sub-dir is empty. Does it mean Sigil doesn't ship with dictionaries, and the user must fetch them from somewhere and install them manually?

[KevinH]

In Preferences for Spellcheck dictionaries you have selected the French dictionary (not French - France) but in the OPF dc-language metadata you have put fr-FR (which means the french language specific to France)

So the easiest solution is to change the OPF dc:language tag to be just fr so you can use the dictionary you already have installed. You can do that in CodeView by hand editing the OPF, or use Sigil's Metadata Editor so no hand opf editing is required.

Or go find a specific fr-FR dictionary from hunspell and install it locally.

[DiapDealer]

https://sigil-ebook.com/sigil-user-g...llcheck%5D/1:0)

[DiapDealer]

The empty hunspell_dictionaries folder is where a user can install custom hunspell dictionaries (in addition to the ones Sigil ships with).

[Shohreh]

After editing the meta through F8, CTRL+ALT+Q does display a list of words

However, even after saving and restarting Sigil, when hitting F4 to jump to the next underlined word, Sigil displays no wordlist in place. Or maybe it's not the way it's supposed to work, à la LibreOffice Writer?

[KevinH]

Huh? You should really read the Sigil User Guide chapter on Spellcheck. You will see there are two different modes of spellchecking. The first is real-time as you type red squiggle underline marking of unknown words. You can right click on any underlined words and if there are suggested replacements you can select them.

The second mode to use the Spellcheck Dialog Tool. You can launch it via the menus or hit the icon with checkmark and ABC on it).

It will generate a sortable list of unknown words. You can select any word, get suggestions, choose to ignore it, etc. It can nicely navigate you to where the potential incorrect word is found so you can see it in context.

[KevinH]

And the wordlist is where you can put language specific words that are spelled correctly but are not in the hunspell dictionary. You can name and save these lists to keep them for the future. These wordlists can contain properly spelled book specific words such as proper names, spelling variants you prefer, or technical jargon with latin-terms that are not suited for a general purpose dictionary.

For general fiction spellchecking, I create a wordlist with all the book specific proper names in the book so they can be used later if a book series is being edited.

[Shohreh]

I expected a drop-down list to be displayed below the offending word when hitting F4.

I'll check if there's a keyboard shortcut or I can add one to avoid shuffling from the keyboard and the mouse back and forth.

Thanks evyerone.

[KevinH]

I have no idea what shortcuts you have assigned to what. So saying things like F4 means nothing to me so I can not follow what you are asking about. Please be specific and name the menu item or icon you are using and what spellcheck mode you are in.

[KevinH]

And based on your description from what I can guess, you are using the red squiggle approach in real time spellchecking mode. That is best used when typing in text.

A better tool is to use when spellchecking an entire document is the Spellcheck Dialog tool mode to get a complete list of all the misspelled words. Youy can sort them as you like. Double-click them to show the context in CV, get a longer list of suggestions, add words to the wordlist, etc.

[Shohreh]

I haven't changed the keyboard shorcuts, they're all default. F4 = Tools > Spellcheck > Next Misspelled Word

I don't find the Spellcheck Dialog as useful because it doesn't show the context.

If the red squiggle > right-click pop-up menu could be opened through a keyboard shortcut in addition to a right-click on the mouse, it could then be assigned to a keyboard shorcut (right ALT/CTRL+4 to match?)

[KevinH]

You just double click in the word in the WordList and CV will be moved to show you the word in context. It nicely handles multiple instances of the same incorrect word, fixing them all across the epub documents so you never have to spellcheck/correct same word twice.

[KevinH]

I will add a keyboard only way to make the Spellcheck Dialog show context for the currently selected word to my to-do list for a future Sigil release as that would help keyboard centric users and those with Accessibility issues with a mouse.

[Shohreh]

Thanks. As for the alternative to right-clicking to display the pop-up menu after hitting F4/Next Misspelled Word: I never use Windows' Apps key, but it comes handy to display the pop-up menu.

Originally Posted by KevinH

You just double click in the word in the WordList and CV will be moved to show you the word in context.

Very nice. Solves the problem.

[Shohreh]

Suggestion for the Spellcheck dialog: If need be, display it so that the user doesn't have to move it to see the word underneath