Re: Spelling in FrameMaker 6.0

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxxxxx>]

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From: <sverre.ola.medalen@kongsberg.com>
> We're a group of people that are involved in producing manuals for a
> project in three different languages - English, German and Norwegian.
> Each manual is represented by a FrameMaker 6.0 book with document
> files which in turn may contain text insets.
> 
> 1. In a book of document files, text insets, tables and graphics, will
> spell checking this book check all of these items? If not, how are you
> solving this task?

Spell checking will check all text in all flows (unless they have a
language property of None), including tables and text frames within
anchored frames. I'm not sure how you would spell check a graphic :-)
Only files included in the book are checked; text insets are *not*
checked just because they are imported into a document.

The solution to text insets is to either include them in the book
file, perhaps last after all "real" files, or to make a separate
book of all text inset files and spell check that book. If you put
all your text insets in a specific folder, this is easy to do.
> 
> 2. My local "maker.ini" file specifies the following locations for
> dictionaries, "UserDictionary=user.dict" and "SiteDictionary=dict\site.dct"
> According to FrameMaker's help on Managing Site Dictionaries, it is
> possible to specify a different site dictionary for each of several
> projects. It seems to me that I can create a site dictionary for each
> language. I can than create a "dict"-folder on the same level as the
> folders holding the manuals, and store the three site dictionaries as
> norwegian.dct, english.dct and german.dct there.
> In my Windows Explorer these folders are found directly under 
> Q:\project\project_name. What will be the syntax for specifying an
> absolute path to these dictionaries? How do we setup FrameMaker to
> easily switch between these dictionaries when performing spelling?
> How do we tell FrameMaker to store a word in the user, document or
> site directory?

Yes, you could have several site dictionaries, but to change between
them in Windows, you'll have to close down FM, edit the maker.ini file,
and restart FM. Regarding syntax, you simply enter the absolute path.
The maker.ini file says:
; If it is not an absolute path, then it is relative to the FMHome directory.

There is no way to easily add words to the site dictionary when performing
a spell check. You basically have to edit the file directly...

Personal dictionaries are much easier to control. You can change them
in the Spelling Checker dialog (Dictionaries > Personal Dictionary >
Change Directory, click OK, select file), and you can add and delete
words by using the Learn and Unlearn buttons. The button Allow in
Document is used for the document's dictionary (surprise!), but there's
no button for the site dictionary...

I haven't tried putting the personal dictionaries on a network drive,
but it should work. Problems will arise if several users run a spell
check at the same time... And, the personal dictionary will be used
when spell checking *all* your documents, unless you turn it off
(using the same menu as described above). (There is no way to turn
off a site dictionary.)

This is all explained in the manual or online help, if you just know
where to look and how to navigate... (not very easy in FM6).


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Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Writer, Uppsala, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/
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