Chapter 21. Spell checker
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## Chapter 21. Spell checker

OmegaT has a built-in spell checker based on the spelling checker used in OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird. It is consequently able to use the huge range of free spelling dictionaries available for these applications.

## 1. Installing spelling dictionaries

Before the spell check function can be used, a suitable dictionary or dictionaries (i.e. for your target language) must be installed. To install spelling dictionaries, follow this procedure:

- In your file manager, create a new folder in a suitable location in which to store spelling dictionaries.

- In OmegaT, select Options > Spell Checking, then click Choose beside the Dictionary file folder field. Navigate to and select the folder you created for dictionaries.

- Place the dictionary files you wish to use in this folder. There are essentially two ways in which you can do this. You can either copy files manually, i.e. from elsewhere on your system, using your file manager; or you can use OmegaT's "Install" function to provide a list of available dictionaries to select from. Note that the "Install" function requires an Internet connection. The selected languages will then be installed and will eventually appear in your spell checker setup window (this may take a while).

Copying the files manually is useful if you already have suitable dictionary files on your system, for instance as part of your OpenOffice.org or Thunderbird installation. The files you need will have the extensions `.aff` and `.dic`, and you need both files in order for the dictionary in question to work. You can use these file extensions to search your desktop for suitable dictionaries. In the case below, no extra folder has been created and no copying of files was necessary, as the OpenOffice.org dictionary folder is used instead:

Figure 21.1. Spell checker setup

Note that in the above case, you may lose the spelling dictionaries, if the OpenOffice.org installation is removed from your system. Creating your own folder and copying the files may be extra work, but possibly worth the trouble.

More recent OpenOffice.org spelling dictionaries are supplied as "OpenOffice.org extensions", with the filename extension .oxt. These are however zip archives: if you rename the file with the extension .zip, you can extract the contents in a zip utility, and you will find the .aff and .dic files that you need, which you can then place in the folder that you created for them.

Please note that the application behind the "Install..." button depends on the Internet list of dictionaries. If it is out of date or does not include the desired language, you will have to look for appropriate vocabularies yourself. OpenOffice.org contains probably the largest vocabulary collection at the OpenOffice.org Extensions site. After the dictionary extension has been downloaded and installed, the corresponding aff and dic will become available. The same can be achieved by downloading a spell checker add-ons for Firefox or Thunderbird; in this case the spell checker files will be stored in your (Firefox or Thunderbird) profile.

Make sure the language code of your target files corresponds to the dictionary's language code: an FR-FR dictionary will not work with an FR target setting. You need to change the setting to FR-FR to have the spell checker recognize the correct dictionary for your target. Look for files with the name, indicating the language used and having extensions aff and dic.

## 2. Using spelling dictionaries

There is no need to instruct OmegaT to use a particular spelling dictionary; OmegaT will use the correct language dictionary based upon the language codes of your project. Check however that the language codes are exactly the same: an FR-FR dictionary will not work with an FR target setting, for example. If necessary, edit the file names of the dictionary or change your project's language settings.

To enable the spell checker, select Options > Spell Checking and tick the Automatically check the spelling of text checkbox (see above).

Figure 21.2. Spellchecker in action

Right-clicking on an underlined word (Artund in the figure above) opens a drop-down menu listing suggestions for the correction (Art und). You can also instruct the spell checker to ignore all the occurrences of the mis-spelled word, or add it to the dictionary.

## 3. Hints

If the spell checker is not working, then make sure first that the check box "Automatically check the spelling of text" in the spell checker dialog (Options > Spell checking...) has been ticked.

Also check that the target language code of your project against the available vocabularies in the setup window. The spell checker uses the target language code to determine the language to be used : if the target language is Brazilian Portuguese (PT_BR), the subfolder with vocabularies must contain the two vocabulary files, called pt_br.aff and pt_br.dic.

If you have already translated a large body of text, and then realize the target language code of the project does not match the spell checker's language code (you specified pt_BR as the language, but there are no pt_BR vocabularies, for instance) you can simply copy the two corresponding files and rename them (e.g. from pt_PT.arr and pt_PT.dic to pt._BR.arr and pt_BR.dic). Of course it is much wiser, to take a short break and download the correct versions of the spell checker.

Note that `Uninstall` physically removes the selected vocabularies. If they are part of OpenOffice.org, as in the above case, they will disappear from that application, too. If, for whatever reason, you need to do this from time to time, it may make sense to copy the files involved to a different folder, reserved just for use by OmegaT.

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