diacritical marks and Word custom dictionary

[shellstar]

How do I add a word that is italicised and has macrons to my custom dictionary?

I have pressed 'add' when running the spell check and thought that these
words were being added to my custom dictionary but when I look closely, the
words are there (in the dic) but WITHOUT the macrons. This no good to me.

I am running Word 2000 on Win 98.

I have tried opening the .dic file (as a word doc) and adding the words
manually but a pop up boxs says I can't save it this way and asks me to save
it as a word doc because .dic files can't save formatted text.
I have also tried to convert the .dic file to garamond (which is the font I
use to get my macrons) but this is no use.

help please!

 

[IndexTurret]

Hi Shellstar,
What you need is to identify a unique text character, for example Ä, and
not just the character "a" with formatting applied to it. Text files such as
custom.dic can't store formatting, just character identities.
Text files can be saved in several formats, the most common being ANSI
and Unicode. The ANSI character set is more limited than Unicode. Here is how
I got my custom.dic to store vowels with macrons:
-In Word, make a new doc.
-Click Insert>Symbol...
-If the "Font" drop-down menu isn't already set to "(normal text)", then set
it to that.
-Set the "Subset" drop-down menu to "Latin Extended-A".
-Look at the characters available and insert the following into your doc:
Ä€ÄĒēĪīŌÅŪū
-Use these inserted characters to make some words that you'd like to store
in your custom.dic, for example,
pīne
mÄcron
-Select your words and copy to clipboard (ctrl+c).
-In Windows Explorer or My Computer, navigate to your custom.dic file, then
open it in Notepad (double-click should do this, or else right-click>"Open
with...").
-Paste the words from the clipboard (ctrl+v).
-Click File>Save as...
-At the botton of the dialog, on the "Encoding" drop-down menu, change
"ANSI" to "Unicode".
-Click "Save". A warning will ask if you want to replace the existing
Custom.dic; say yes.
-Close Custom.dic.
-Close Word.
-When you relaunch Word, those words like "pÄ«ne" or "mÄcron" will now be
recognized as being OK per Custom.dic.

Hope this works for you; I tried it myself and it worked.
Cheers,
IndexTurret

 

[shellstar]

Hi IndexTurret-

Thanks for the tip but it doesn't seem to be working for me.

I'm ok with all of the steps up until I open up my custom.dic in Notepad
(fine) and then I paste my copied Macron words/letters.
When they are pasted, they do NOT show up as macrons.

I go to 'save as' and there is NO option at the bottom of the dialog box to
give me the option of 'ANSI' OR 'Unicode'. I only have the option of saving
the file as a 'txt doc' or 'all files'.
I have tried saving both ways (and have replaced the custom.dic) but when I
re-open Word (and after I've clicked on the 'show spelling errors in this
doc' button in Tools/dictionarys) then I'm back to the same thing: the
dictionary doesn't recognise my macrons and all the macron words I type have
got the red undeline beneath them....

more suggestions, please!
remember, I am running Word 2000 - perhaps this makes a difference?
cheers
shellstar

 

[IndexTurret]

-Hmmm. I was surprised to learn that, in Notepad, when you went to 'save as',
there was no option at the bottom of the dialog box to give me the option of
'ANSI' OR 'Unicode'---only the option of saving the file as a 'txt doc' or
'all files'. I guess Windows 98 didn't allow for this option in Notepad.
-However, there may be a work-around. If you have time, I would try doing
the same operation described in my previous post, but instead of editing
Custom.dic in Notepad, edit it in Word (as you have already done, I know).
But this time with the following difference from when you edited it in Word
before:
-In Word, create the word list using the inserted symbols as described
previously.
-Click File>Save as...
-Navigate to the folder where Custom.dic lives. (It is different depending
on the Word version, but you already know where it is for Word 2000. [Other
readers: Find it via Start>Search>Filename = "Custom.dic".])
-In the "Save as type" drop-down menu, instead of choosing ".doc" format,
scroll to "Plain text (*.txt)" and select it.
-In the "Filename" box, type "Custom.dic". Click OK.
-You SHOULD get a dialog box titled "File Conversion".
-If not, then this test didn't work; abort.
-If so, good. Under "Text encoding" there are 3 radio buttons: Windows
(default), MS-DOS, and "Other encoding". Choose "Other encoding".
-A list of encoding formats on the right will become available. Scroll to
find "Unicode", and select it. Click OK.
-Close the document.
-Close Word.
-In Windows Explorer or My Computer, navigate to Custom.dic and open it with
Notepad (double-clicking it should do, or else right-click>Open with...).
-You SHOULD see the macron characters still preserved.
-If so, then the operation worked and upon re-launching Word, the words
should be OK per spellcheck.
-Hope this works. Good luck!!
IndexTurret

 

[shellstar]

Hi IndexTurret,

thanks for the additional advice!
I think I have it working, although I did have to adapt some of the commands
from your last post.

I saved my dictionary list as a word doc and chose the 'encoded text' format
(*.txt), even though I had several other options for (*.txt) files including
'text only', 'text only with line breaks', 'MS-DOS text' and 'MS-DOS text
with line breaks'. I ignored these.

I then saved teh file and up popped a window called 'file conversion'. From
here I had a choice of 'conversions' from the pulldown menu and I chose
'Unicode', although there were other choices such as 'Unicode Big-Endian',
'Unicode UTF-7' and 'Unicode UTF-8' (not sure what these ones do so I left
them alone).

This was all fine and easy to do. But afterward I couldn't open the Word doc
in notepad. Win98 does NOT give you the option of rightclicking on the mouse
to get 'Open with', you just get 'Open' and can't choose the program.

I got around this problem but opening Word and getting into
Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar and then clicking on the 'dictionaries'
button. From here I was able to add a new dictionary and I selected my
custom.text document which I had saved in the usual custom dictionaries
folder. I HAD to, however, make sure that in the languages box, I selected
'none' (instead of English-Australian, for example) because otherwise Word
would prompt the box 'the custom dictionary (filepath xyz) is not available'.
This doesn't happen when you select 'none'.

I have found that this works!
My macrons in my text are no longer picked up by the spell check.
I'm going to create several more custom dictionaries like this because I
have found that my new one is already full (macrons must take up a lot of
space?)

thanks for all of your help - I hope others with the same problem have also
got it sorted !

shellstar