Reply To: XMetal 7.0 Spellcheck

[Derek Read]

Not “Learning” Your Words
One thing you may have missed is that when you perform this operation it lists the words that the spell checker considers misspelled in the Results pane, but you must open a file to either to correct a particular word or add it to the spell checker's list of words to skip (these go into your “UWL” file as with the standard spell checker UI). The same UI that you use when you open a file any other way (from a CMS or the file system) is used, except that when you double click in the Results pane the file will open and your selection should be moved to the word. It will also be highlighted if you have that option toggled on in the Results pane (looks like a yellow highlighter pen with the letter AB above it).

Results Pane Limit
The Results pane limits the number of results it returns because the control used to render those results is fairly CPU intensive. This system has been designed to be used for displaying various different types of results (Find in Files, Spell check, and many others including everything in View > Results). It is also extensible so that partners (and possibly clients in the future) can create their own lists of results in a nicely formatted way that suits what they wish to list there. Performance was considered less important in this case than the need for a flexible design. When an operation finds “too many” results they are limited. In this case you can do one of the following:

1. Address anything that needs addressing and then re-run the operation. In the case of the spell checker you can add words you wish to skip to the spell checker's UWL or make corrections to words that are wrong.
2. Limit the scope of the files being operated on by operating on a sub-map, a specific folder, or open a number of files and select “All Open Documents”.
3. For operations other than spell checking (such as Find in Files) you can try to be more specific up front in what you are attempting to find. For example, instead of using the Text tab use the Markup tab to limit which elements that text should be found within.

Adding Words Not in the Spell Checker
The spell checker has a large number of words that it recognizes, but if you find that many words you use (perhaps specific to your industry) you may wish to create a distribute a UWL file to people at your company. This is a pretty common strategy to make sure everyone at a company is spelling such words the same way. One strategy is to make someone the spelling gatekeeper. They can maintain a file with your non-standard words in it and then add those all at once to their own spell checker's UWL file. Once that is done you can copy that file from machine to machine:
1. Tools > Spell Checker  (answer No if prompted to close) > Options (button) > User Word Lists
2. Select Add List (button) browse to and locate the UWL file.

You can use up to 10 UWL files at one time (though a personal one and one that is officially maintained is usually enough).

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