AbiWord: Difficulty with Spell checker

I don't see English (New Zealand) as a supported language (nor was I aware that it had its own variant). I think they dropped support for it as I only see it in some archives files.

That said, are there any files you see on your local PC in X:\Documents and Settings\[login]\AbiSuite that look like dictionary files (aside from custom.dic)? I think that may be where you have it for some reason. Dictionary files are supposed to be installed within AbiWord itself. So in the portable version: AbiWordPortable\App\AbiSuite2\dictionary

I had the same problem with English Australian.
I too am happy to use the American dictionary (better than none).
Anyway, go to the folder
xxx\AbiWordPortable\App\AbiSuite2\dictionary (where 'xxx' is where the program is run from)
Open ispell_dictionary_list.xml with a program that can edit xml files (Notepad++ here)
Look for the line that says

 (dictionary tag="en-NZ" name="british.hash"        encoding="iso-8859-1" /) 

and change it to

 (dictionary tag="en-NZ" name="american.hash"       encoding="iso-8859-1" /) 

At least that worked for the en-AU one here.

edit - had to put '(' and ')' in the above lines as '' break this forum coding

Checking the AbiWord site, on their Downloads page, in the Windows box, in the Get Dictionaries list, I see British as well as American. There are no Canadian versions for either French or English - so I get along here using British and French.

For help installing, I used the information in the replies to the chap in this forum needing to install a Swedish dictionary.

I had to do a bit of file moving as I did not want to rename folders - the essential is that the hash file ends up in the Dictionay folder on your portable drive (USB key/thumb drive in my case.)

Hope this helps.

AbiWord dictionaries are available from here:

http://abiword.com/downloads/dictionaries/Windows/

The dictionary installer will ask you for the local installation of Abiword but, if you point the installer at the root install directory for AbiWord Portable, it seems to put the dictionary file in the wrong place for portable installations. To get around this, make sure to point the installer at the AbiSuite2 directory on your portable device:

PortableApps\AbiWordPortable\App\AbiSuite2\

Click 'Next' and the installer will do the rest for you.

Alternatively, you can point the installer at a temporary directory (e.g. \Temp) and hit 'Next'. You will then find the dictionary file in:

Temp\AbiSuite2\dictionary

The dictionary directory will contain a .hash file named after the language you just installed.

Next just copy the .hash file to the AbiSuite2\dictionary directory on your portable device. E.g.:

PortableApps\AbiWordPortable\App\AbiSuite2\dictionary

This is still a live issue under 2.6.6 just released on Portableapps.com. In my case the message refers to "Cannot load the dictionary for the English (Canada)[en-CA] language."

Like a number of other users in the wider non US English world, I am prepared use the American spell check in order to use this product. I am running VISTA home premium edition.

Abiword appears to picking up the machine language setting and using that - in theory, I should be able to go to TOOLS PREFERENCES and under the general tab, tell Abiword to use English US which is the only option the drop down box offers me. The setting only takes place on restarting Abiword - however, when I restart it, the setting is lost and not activated. I wonder if this a VISTA specific problem.

I have read some of the more complex fixes offered by others, but feel there is something more fundamentally wrong that needs to be fixed. Meanwhile I will stay with slow but reliable OpenOffice.

Hope someone can provide a good lasting fix.

Many thanks.
/opsimathic

Hi Guys,

I tried latest portable available here 2.8.2
I need 2 languages for spelling (English & Russian)

But despite many languages in the list & its' declared that spellcheck is available by default The Spellcheck option is dimmed

How to fix it?

Thanks in advance