• Default Language - This option defines the default language to use for spell checking. The package comes with an English (en-US) dictionary. Custom dictionaries can also be added and will be selectable here once installed.

• Ignore words with digits - This will cause the spell checker to ignore any words containing digits. The default is enabled.

• Ignore words in all uppercase - This will cause the spell checker to ignore any words consisting of all uppercase letters. The default is enabled.

• Ignore words that look like filenames and e-mail addresses - This will cause the spell checker to ignore words that contain periods and at signs with no intervening whitespace (i.e. Userinfo.config or auser@mydomain.com). This option can occasionally cause a misspelled word to be missed such as when a space is missing following the period in a sentence. However, it excludes far more false reports and is enabled by default.

• Ignore words that look like XML elements in spell checked text - This will cause the spell checker to ignore words within angle brackets in spell checked text (i.e. "The <para> element creates a paragraph"). This option can occasionally cause a misspelled word to be missed such as when a space is missing following the opening angle bracket. However, it excludes far more false reports and is enabled by default.

• Treat underscores as separators - This option is disabled by default and all words containing underscores will be ignored. Enabling this option will treat the underscore as a word separator and each word separated by the underscores will be spell checked along with all the other text.

• User Dictionary for Language - This lists the words added to the user dictionary for the selected language. Selecting a word in the list box and clicking the Remove button will remove the selected word from the user dictionary.

XML files are given special handling to ignore the content of certain elements entirely and to include the values of certain attributes when spell checking is performed. This can greatly reduce the number of false reports when working with XML files. The options are divided into two sections on this tab.

• Ignored XML Elements - This section lets you manage the list of ignored XML elements. If an element name appears in this list, its inner text will be ignored when spell checking is performed. All other elements not in the list will have their inner text spell checked.

• Spell Checked Attributes - This section lets you manage the list of attribute names that will have their values spell checked. The values for all other attributes not in the list will be ignored.

Each section contains a text box in which you can enter the element or attribute name. Click the Add button to add the name to the list. XML is case sensitive so enter the names exactly as they appear in the files. The list box shows the current entries in each section. Select an entry and click the Remove button to remove it. Clicking the Default button will reset the associated list to the default set of elements or attributes.

The standalone GUI uses NHunspell to perform spell checking and comes with an English (en-US) dictionary by default. Since NHunspell makes use of Open Office dictionaries, you can download additional dictionaries for other languages. To make them available to the spell checker, do the following:

• Go to the Open Office Extensions dictionary page and download the dictionaries for the languages you need. Dictionaries for OpenOffice versions 2, 3, and 4 are supported.

• If the downloaded file has a .oxt extension, rename it to have a .zip extension.

• Extract the content of the file and locate the .aff and .dic dictionary files. These will need to be copied into the local application data folder which equates to one of the following folders based on your operating system:

  • Windows Vista or later: %LOCALAPPDATA%\EWSoftware\Sandcastle Help File Builder

  • Windows XP: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\EWSoftware\Sandcastle Help File Builder

• Note that the .aff and .dic files must be named after the language they represent with no other text in the filename and the language parts must be separated with an underscore or a dash. If necessary rename the files to match the required format. For example:

  • de_DE.aff and de_DE.dic or de-DE.aff and de-DE.dic for German.

  • sr_Latn.aff and sr_Latn.dic or sr-Latn.aff and sr-Latn.dic for Serbian (Latin).

• Adding English dictionary files (en_US.aff and en_US.dic) to the local application data folder will effectively replace the default English dictionary supplied with the standalone GUI.

• Once the files are in the local application data folder and are named correctly, you will be able to select the related language on the Spell Checking tab of the User Preferences dialog box.

Note

After installing the custom dictionary files, if the language does not appear in the configuration dialog, the files may not be named correctly. If the language is selected but spelling is still occurring in English, there may be a problem with one or both of the dictionary files. Please post a message on the Help File Builder's discussion board asking for help if you are unable to resolve the issue.

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