Re: British English spellchecker problem

The changing back to US English when you type is because of your
keyboard/locale settings in Windows. You can turn off "Change language
when changing locale" or similar in the Preferences window (under Tools).

You will need to use the Set Language feature to mark text in the
language you wish to check. You can open up normal.awt in the AbiWord
program directory and change the language there, and it will become the
default for all new documents. There might be a page about this on the
AbiWord wiki - look around for it (I couldn't find it offhand but you
never know).

Good luck! Thanks for using AbiWord!

Ryan

Mark Alexander wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have installed AbiWord 2.4.5 on an IBM ThinkPad 380Z (300 MHz, 96
> MB) running Windows 98SE (with Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a from
> exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html). The set-up file was downloaded from
> your website (abiword-setup-2.4.5.exe). I also downloaded from there
> the British English dictionary - AbiWord_Dictionary_British.exe.
>
> I seem to have run into a problem with the spellchecker. I have tried
> doing the main install with US English selected (as per default),
> without ticking any other languages (the laptop has no Internet
> connection set up). I then added separately the British English
> dictionary. This resulted in files called "american.hash",
> "ispell_dictionary_list.xml" and "british.hash" in the directory
> "c:\Program Files\AbiSuite2\dictionary\". The "spellcheck-as-you-type"
> feature accepted "theater", "center" and "meter" but objected to
> "theatre", "centre", "metre" and "cheque". As I am not a great fan of
> spellchecking-as-you-type anyway (I think it interferes with the
> thought process), I turned it off and tried spellchecking "by hand"
> (both from Tools > Spellchecker and from the icon on the Toolbar). I
> got the same results.
>
> Next, I uninstalled AbiWord completely, including manual removal of
> any leftover directories. I installed it again, this time deselecting
> US English (i.e. without any dictionaries at all) and then separately
> adding the British English dictionary. This produced greyed-out
> spellchecking button on the Toolbar and greyed-out spellchecker item
> under Tools menu. The "c:\Program Files\AbiSuite2\dictionary\"
> directory contained only the "british.hash" file. I uninstalled.
>
> Third time round I installed like the first time but now I renamed
> "american.hash" to
> "_american.hash". The spellchecker complained that it "Could not load
> the dictionary for the English (US) [en-US] language". The Tools >
> Set Language dialogue box has an "ABC" icon against "English (UK)"; it
> also has them against English (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New
> Zealand, South Africa). But the highlight always defaults to English
> (US). The line under the languages window says "Default Language:
> (English UK)". "Make default for document" is unticked. Ticking it
> changes the "Status Bar" indicator from en-US to en-GB but only for
> one letter. Any movement to the right immediately changes it back to
> en-US.
>
> One workaround I found is to select everything you've typed, then go
> to Tools > Set Language, highlight "English (UK)" and tick "Make
> default for document". Then en-GB seems to "stick" to than part and
> you can run the spellchecker from both the menu and the Toolbar. But
> the moment you type something new, the indicator in the bottom right
> corner reverts to en-US. So you can work around it but it is a little
> annoying.
>
> I have had a half-hearted grope around the Registry but could not find
> anything that would appear useful (at least to me).
>
> Any ideas, anybody? TIA
>
> Alek
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-- 
Ryan Pavlik
AbiWord Win32 Platform Maintainer: www.abisource.com
AbiWord Community Outreach Project: www.cleardefinition.com/oss/abi/blog/
"Optimism is the father that leads to achievement."
 -- Helen Keller
"The folder structure in a modern Linux distribution such as Ubuntu
was largely inspired by the original UNIX foundations that were
created by men with large beards and sensible jumpers."
 -- Jono Bacon, The Ubuntu Guide
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