The Attribute Panel with an active editor. The spell checker has identified the misspelled word and indicates it with a red squiggle. Spell checking only is performed when you activate an Attribute cell for editing.
IMatch uses the established Hunspell spell checking engine to perform spell checking in the Metadata Panel, the Attributes Panel and selected other features and dialog boxes. The spell checker works in the background, checking your spelling as you type.
Go directly to Using the Spell Checker
Hunspell is an open source spell checking engine used by OpenOffice and LibreOffice, Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, operating systems like MaxOSX and many other open source and proprietary applications.
See the official Hunspell website for more information about Hunspell. There is also an informative Wikipedia article on Hunspell.
All options related to the spell checker are accessible under Edit > Preferences > Application: Spell Checker.
Dictionary folder | The folder on your computer which contains the Hunspell dictionaries. When you download new dictionaries, place them in this folder. See below for more information. By default, IMatch uses the folder C:/ProgramData/photools.com/IMatch6/dictionaries. |
User dictionary | The fully qualified file name of your custom dictionary. IMatch automatically creates an (empty) dictionary for each IMatch user. When you add new words to your dictionary, these words are added to this file. |
Language | The current spell checker language. IMatch scans the dictionary folder to determine the languages supported by the installed dictionaries. It then displays these languages here for you to choose from.If this list is empty, no dictionary has been installed yet. Just download a dictionary for your language. Then close and re-open this dialog to make IMatch rescan the directory folder. |
Spell as you type | This option allows you to disable automatic spell checking. |
The IMatch distribution does not include any dictionaries because of licensing issues and to keep the IMatch download small. Dictionaries can become quite huge - for example, the German dictionary has over 200,000 (!) words and is over 4 MB in size. Shipping IMatch with dictionaries for even the most common languages would increase the download size considerably.
We have prepared downloads for frequently used languages for you. These dictionaries are open source and under licenses like the LGPL or BSD which allow us to distribute these files. The dictionaries are published as part of the Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Mozilla and other projects.
Download the prepared ZIP files from the links provided in the following list. Extract the files with the .dic and .aff extensions and copy them to the IMatch dictionary folder on your disk. After restarting IMatch, the new dictionaries will be available and IMatch uses them automatically.
These dictionaries might be out of date. We recommend you download the latest dictionaries from the sources listed below.
If your language is missing in the list, you can download a dictionary for your from one of the sources listed in the next section.
Please let us know so we can include your language in the next release.
There are several sources where you can download dictionaries for your language.
| Source | Download Address |
|---|---|
| OpenOffice (v2) dictionaries | OpenOffice Spell Checker Dictionaries These dictionaries come as files with the .OXT extension. Just change the extension to .ZIP to open them in Windows Explorer. Extract the contained .dic and .aff file and copy them into the dictionary folder on your system. See the Configuration section above for details.This is the usually best place to find a dictionary for your language. To find the dictionary for your language, press Ctrl+F on that page and then search for the name of your language. |
| LibreOffice Dictionaries. | https://extensions.libreoffice.org/ These extensions come packed in files with the .OXT file extension. This is actually a ZIP file. After changing the extension to .zip in Windows Explorer, you can double-click the file to view and extract the contents. Look for the files with the .dic and .aff extension and copy them into the dictionary folder on your system. |
The folder for IMatch dictionaries can be seen in the application preferences (see above). Usually this is:
C:\ProgramData\photools.com\IMatch*\dictionaries
where * stands for the IMatch version you are using, e.g., IMatch6 for IMatch 2017.
Some of the dictionary packs use the file extension .OXT. To open these dictionary packs in Windows Explorer and to extract the .dic and .aff files, you first have to change the file extension to .zip.
A dictionary consists of two files: One file with a .dic extension and one file with a .aff extension. For example, the standard dictionary for U.S. English is contained in these files:
en_US.dic en_US.aff
The dictionaries for Great Britain English and the German language are named similarly:
en_GB.dic en_GB.aff de_DE.dic de_DE.aff
IMatch requires that dictionaries are named in this format:
mm_ss.dic and mm_ss.aff
where mm is the two-letter language code for the main language (e.g., en) and ss is the two-letter code for the sub-language (e.g., US). The .dic and .aff extensions are mandatory.
When you download dictionaries from some of the sources above, the dictionary files usually already follow this naming schema. If this is not the case, just rename the files using the mm_ss schema before copying them into the dictionary folder. IMatch will not find them otherwise.
After downloading new dictionaries (and restarting IMatch), you can open the Edit > Preferences > Application dialog and scroll down to see the spell checker options. Click on the Language drop-down to expand it. All languages for which dictionaries have been found are listed here. If the list is empty or does not show your new dictionary, the dictionary files are not named properly.
1. You download the US English Spell Checking Dictionary from the OpenOffice web site (see link in the table above ).
2. After the download is complete, you rename the downloaded file from en_us.oxt to en_us.zip.
3. You double-click the file in Windows Explorer to explore its contents.
4. You copy the files en_US.dic and en_US.aff into the IMatch dictionaries folder.
After restarting IMatch, you have spell checking available!
If you work with multiple languages, just download and install multiple dictionaries using the steps above. IMatch then offers a language selector in the spell checker context menu.
When at least one dictionary is installed, IMatch automatically checks spelling in the Attribute Panel, the Metadata Panel and in some other features and dialog boxes. If a misspelled word is found, or a word not in the current dictionary, IMatch underlines the word with a red squiggle:
The Attribute Panel with an active editor. The spell checker has identified the misspelled word and indicates it with a red squiggle. Spell checking only is performed when you activate an Attribute cell for editing.
The spell checker also operates in the Metadata Panel.
Spell checking is performed when you edit the values for a tag.
The spell checker ignores text contained in { and }. This prevents it from flagging IMatch variables as misspelled words.
You can either just fix the typo manually in the editor, or you right-click the underlined word to open the spell checker context menu. This menu shows the suggestions found by the spell checker in the dictionary.
The spell checker menu is only accessible when you right-click on a misspelled word. When you right-click elsewhere, IMatch displays the standard context menu for whatever feature you are using.
To correct the word, click on the suggestion you want to replace the misspelled word with:
After right-clicking a misspelled word, IMatch opens the spell checker context menu with suggestions.
You can change the language used for spell checking either in the Application Configuration or in the context menu of the speller. IMatch offers only languages for which you have installed a dictionary. If only one dictionary is installed, no language selection is available.
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IMatch automatically creates and maintains a custom dictionary in Hunspell format for each IMatch user. The spell checker context menu allows you to add words to your custom dictionary. These words will then not be flagged as misspelled words again. A custom dictionary works across all languages.
IMatch stores the user-specific dictionaries in the standard folder for per-user application data. The physical folder varies, depending on the Windows version used and the environment in which you work. The file name of the custom dictionary is shown in the Application preferences.
The custom dictionary is a plain text file in UTF-8 encoding. You can edit this file while IMatch is not running in any UTF-8 enabled text editor (e.g. Windows Notepad). This may become useful if you have accidentally added a word to the custom dictionary, or if you want to 'fill' it from an already existing word list.
The format of the file is simple: One word per line, each line separated by a standard CRLF (carriage return/line-feed). The following example shows a custom dictionary with five words:
IMatch photools Gallifrey Slartibartfast Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft