spell check less than useful

[lanval]

I’m having some issue with the spell check in Flare.

We have four dictionaries that are keep in a Global project:

• English (Australia) Dictionary.mcdic
• English (Canada) Dictionary.mcdic
• English (United Kingdom) Dictionary.mcdic
• English (United States) Dictionary.mcdic

I’m surprised by some of the things that get flagged: Brackets, both opening ( and closing ), forward slashes /.

In our manuals, these are used hundreds of times as they appear in the User Interface. The irritating thing is that I add these to the dictionary (and I verify that they are in the dictionary), but these continue to get flagged every single time.

Any suggestions?

[roboHAL]

lanval, I have a suggestion....

First, you haven't posted the version of Flare you are using. I assume the latest, 2016 r2. When I use the Spell Check window and come across a "valid" word that Flare flags as a misspelling, choosing Add To Dictionary causes Flare not to flag that word again. That said, I'm using a Global dictionary that came with the Flare install.

Perhaps try the following. This is a MadCap tech support procedure that usually clears most peculiarities.

> Close Flare.
> Browse to the folder with your Flare project using Windows Explorer
> Delete the Analyzer and Output folder(or move the Output folder to a different location if you do not want to lose any previously built outputs)
> Browse into your Project folder and delete the "Users" folder inside

> Then, navigate to C:\Users\[Your User]\Appdata\Roaming\MadCap Software\Flare
> Select and delete the CatapultMDIEditor folder

Hope that helps

[Robotman]

Hi Lanval,

Forgive me if you're already doing this, I was just unsure if I was reading your post correctly.

You say that your dictionary is kept in a 'global' project but I am unsure if you mean:
- Your dictionaries are stored in a Global Project Linking project, or
- Your dictionaries are stored in a custom location

If it is the former, then I would suggest there are better ways of managing your dictionaries.
If it is the latter, then I would suggest you:
1. Ensure that all of your projects are set with a specific dictionary at the project level (on the Ribbon bar, select Project > Project Properties > Language tab), and
2. That your Flare > Options > Spelling tab is set to the right location.
As an aside, I would also suggest that each of your targets (Target name > Language tab) is set to Default but this may depend on how many languages you are catering for.

For our projects, we use a custom location for our dictionaries and these are not stored 'inside' any Flare project. The dictionary files are stored on a completely separate folder on a server. This requires that all users have their File > Options > Spelling tab location set to the same location. When a new word is added, they update it not at the 'project' level but at the 'global' level. This means the correct dictionary file is updated with the word or character in question.

Hope this helps.

[lanval]

Thanks for the replies.

I’m using the latest version of Flare 12 (no updates are available).

How we are set up:

• We are using global dictionaries that are stored in a Global project on the network. These are the ones that are linked to in Flare > Options > Spelling tab.
• The language selected for the Project gets switched based on the phase of the documentation process. We write the manual for one locale, for example Canadian, and then we do a separate pass from each of the other locales (Australia, UK, and USA) to update the text and screenshots to match the local variations. We select the appropriate language for the phase we are working in.
• Each target has one of the four dictionaries selected on the Target name > Language tab.

I wasn’t clear in my original post, some updates to the dictionaries are added properly and will no longer be flagged, however the non-character text such as (, ), and / will be added to the dictionaries but the spellchecker still flags them.

roboHal, thanks for the suggestion. I tried them both, but with no joy.