Spell and Grammar Checking

Sisulizer has build-in support for spell and grammar checking. You can check spelling of both original strings and translated strings. Spelling can be used either on real time or started by a menu command. You can configure any number of spell checkers with different language and dictionary combinations. Finally you can use the spell checkers that best suites the needs of your project.

• Supported spell checker engines
• Configured spell checkers
• How Sisulizer selects what checker to use
• Spell checking modes
• Grammar checking
• Custom dictionaries
• Ignoring words

Supported spell checker engines

Sisulizer can use several spell checker engines. The following engines are supported:

Sisulizer has license to deploy Polar spell checker engine and dictionary files for several languages. Polar dictionary files are quite compact and they can be easily included to Sisulizer setup. This is why Polar is enabled out of the box.

Hunspell is a better spell checker than Polar and its dictionaries typically contains more words than the dictionaries of Polar. Hunspell supports all the languages of Polar plus many more. Why don't we replace Polar with Hunspell in Sisulizer setup? The reason is simple: Hunspell is an open source spell checker. Sisulizer has license to deploy the engine file, hunspelldll.dll, but not the dictionary files that are under GPL or LPGL licenses. They can only be deployed with open source applications. This is why Sisulizer setup installs only the engine file. However, the end user of Sisulizer (you) is allowed to download dictionary files and use them. We recommend you to download an OpenOffice dictionary package and to install it to Sisulizer.

Lingsoft has a superior spell checker that is used in several applications including Microsoft Office and Adobe products. Lingsoft also supports grammar checking. If you need a high quality spell checking for Nordic languages it is recommended to purchase Lingsoft spell checker and install it. Next time you start Sisulizer it can use your Lingsoft spell checker.

Configured spell checkers

Choose Tools | General menu and select Spelling & Grammar sheet to configure spell checking. The sheet contains list of configured spell checkers. You can add any number of spell checker/dictionary combinations. There can be multiple spell checkers for one language. Each spell checker item configures one of the above spell checker engine with one dictionary and language. Each configuration uses a custom dictionary file. It is a dictionary where you can add your own words. By default each Sisulizer project has its own custom dictionary that is saved inside Sisulizer project file. You can also make custom dictionary to be save into Sisulizer configuration file in case it is shared with all projects. Third option is to use external custom dictionary file. Two or more spell checker configurations can share the same dictionary file but they must have different custom dictionary locations.

To add a new spell checker configuration click Add button and browse the dictionary file. You can add following dictionary files into Sisulizer:

How Sisulizer selects what checker to use

If there is only one configure spell checker for the language Sisulizer will always use it. If there are more than one the rules to choose are:

1. If the user has attached a spell checker for a column or source Sisulizer uses that.
2. If there is no attached spell checkers Sisulizer uses the first spell checker in the configured spell checker list where the language of the spell checker matches exactly for the language in the project. For example if you have German (Germany) column in the project and there are two German spell checker: German and German (Germany). Sisulizer will use the later, German (Germany), because it has exact language match.
3. If there is no exact match Sisulizer will use the first spell checker matching only the language part.

To attach spell checkers for a project choose Column | Languages properties menu to open language dialog and set the speller in the Language sheet. You can also choose Project | Options menu to open project dialog and set the default speller in the Spelling sheet. To attach a spell checker for original language use spelling sheet of source dialog (Project | Edit Source).

Spell checking modes

Sisulizer has three spell checking modes. They are:

Mode	Description
Check as you type	This is the "World" styled spell checking where Sisulizer always checks spelling as you type or as you view rows. If a spelling errors is found the word is marked with red line. For example the following image contains a situation where "Sample" is misspelled. To correct spelling move mouse on the top of a marked word and right click to show suggested word list. Choose the right spelling from the list or edit the word manually. Spell checking works also on original column but you can not change the values (because values are hard coded to the original files). If you find a spelling error in the original file(s) you should correct the programmer or author who created the files. Only he or she can modify original files and fix spelling. You can turn this on and off by checking Check spelling as you type check box on Spelling sheet of Tools | General Settings dialog.
Interactive	You start spell checking by choosing Column | Spelling menu. Sisulizer checks spelling of all words in the selected column.
Through validation	Validation feature also contains spell checking validation. Choose Validation | Validate Original or Validation | Validate Translation and check Incorrect spelling in the validation list.

No matter what spell checking mode you use you need to have at least one spell checker configure for the language of the column or original language if you are checking spelling of the original strings.

Grammar checking

Some spell checkers support grammar checking. Grammar checking is enabled if you have installed such a spell checker. Sisulizer has two grammar checking modes. They are:

Mode	Description
Check as you type	This works in the same way as Check as you type spell checking. For example the following image contains a situation where Finnish sentence "Tämä on väärin" ("This is wrong") is using wrong grammar. You can turn this on and off by checking Check grammar as you type check box on Spelling sheet of Tools | General Settings dialog.
Interactive	You start grammar checking by choosing Column | Grammar menu. Sisulizer checks grammar of all sentences in the selected column.

Grammar checking is disabled if the selected spell checker does not support grammar checking.

Custom dictionaries

An important part of spell checking are custom dictionaries. A custom dictionary is a dictionary where you can add your own words. The spell checker will look from the main dictionary first. If not found then it will look from the custom dictionary. The main dictionary is generally read only but for custom dictionary you always has full control. You can add and remove items from it. Sisulizer can store custom dictionary is two different way:

Ignoring words

It is not always practical to add all unknown words to the custom dictionary. Add only those words that are common and you know for sure that they are proper words of the language or names such as product or company names. For all other words it is better to mark them ignored. This tell Sisulizer not to spell check the word. You can ignore words by location or my value. By location ignores that string only on that location. If the same word appears on some other location it will not be ignored. If you ignore by value all same word everywhere on the project are ignored.

Whenever you see a misspelled word, right click it and choose Add "word" to Dictionary to add the word to the custom dictionary, or Ignore "word" to ignore it on this location, or Ignore All "word" to ignore all instances of the word.