Language swiching/spell-checking

[shmulik]

Hello all,

I really like working in Mellel, but it can't figure out if it has a feature I really like in NisusWP. In Nisus you can switch languages/spelling dictionaries/input keyboards with a a keyboard shortcut.

It seemed to me that the secondary font feature might do this, but I can't figure out how to do it. So maybe not.

I can't decide between the two apps because I like some of the more intuitive (to me) aspects of NWP plus the language switching (in my work I go back and forth between writing in English and citing in other "European" languages quite a lot), but I think Mellel is nicer to actually work in (text rendering and typing, and also looking at the actual document are all nicer in Mellel, in my opinion). (Note: I own both, so no need to sell me on either one).

Any help would be much appreciated.

best,
Sam

[gnoli]

You're right: Mellel is nicer, but NWP has features very important that lack in Mellel. In order of importance, in my opinion:
1) Better language support
2) Multiple Keyboard shortcuts
3) Better compatibility with other apps
4) Cross-refs
5) Lists continuing in long docs, and in general a better lists management
6) More intuitive interface
7) Superior Find/Replace capability
Powerful macro
Mellel wins in this fields (in order of importance, in my opinion):
1) Better integration with Bookends
2) Better fonts management (OT)
3) Better text core
Result: the perfect WP does not exist

[jannuss]

I really like working in Mellel, but it can't figure out if it has a feature I really like in NisusWP. In Nisus you can switch languages/spelling dictionaries/input keyboards with a a keyboard shortcut.

Sam, language switching on the Mac is an OS X feature. I haven't used Nisus in years, but I seem to remember that in this aspect it's works just the same as Mellel:

-- you select the languages you want to use in System Preferences/International/Input Menu
-- towards the bottom of the same menu, you select the keyboard shortcut you prefer for language switching.
-- in Mellel, you select main and secondary fonts. With the secondary font you select the appropriate script.

Now, when you hit the keyboard shortcut for your second language, Mellel will automatically use the secondary font in that language.

Chapter 28 of the Mellel tutorial deals with this in detail.

Janet

[shmulik]

This comes a month after the initial posting as a little follow up.

I'm happy to say, I was fooling around and found out that the OS X native spell checking, which Mellel uses, actually has a "multilingual spell-checker" (how multi-lingual, I don't know, I work with English, French, and Spanish in the same document and it deals with it perfectly as far as I can tell...) This is a bit of a defeat, of course, because I have been using Macs for about 5 years now and never knew this. This is also why I bought Nisus Writer Express (easy multi-lingual spell-checking) after having bought and liked Mellel... Little did I know my own computer had everything I needed!

In any case, I'm happy to say that this now has moved me past any reluctance I once felt about Mellel. I won't be trusting my scholarly writing to anything less!

best,
s

[suavito]

I once played around with Greek as second language, ticked it in the list of the OSes keyboard settings, switched to it and set the second font in Mellel to Greek. Worked fine. As did the fine tuning of the second font's size to make it fit perfectly into the line height of the main font.

Switching to Greek changed the keyboard layout completely – of course it did, because instead of Latin characters now Greek ones were used.

So far, so good. But what I never managed to do is using other Latin based languages like English or French (my native language is German) WITHOUT changing the keyboard layout! I just want to change the language to switch to another spell checker, not to get irritated because of the "z" and the "y" having switched places when going from German to English (and this is just one example).

Is there any way of changing the language without changing the keyboard layout in Mac OS X?

And how about if Mellel's second font could be set to the same language system (like Latin) like the main font? For some reasons it might be necessary to highlight the second language text in a special way, a different font, maybe a different colour or just italics. It would be great if this works automatically when you change the OSes language.

[shmulik]

suavito--

Strangely, at least as it seems to me the keyboard and (native) spell-checker function independently of one another. Especially if you're using the multi-lingual spell-checker (which should at least recognize the European languages you're using. Por ejemplo, aquí te escribo en español, using the US keyboard and the native spell-checker (set to the multi-lingual dictionary) doesn't find the slightest fault.

Open the Mac native dictionary and change it to the multi-lingual setting. That should solve your problems...

[suavito]

You probably think I'm totally stupid, but I can assure you I'm just partially … blind … or something.

I always looked in the system settings for any dictionary settings and it has never came to my mind to really check the drop down list in the check spelling setting you reach by a program's menu. So I have never spotted that strange language named "Multilingual" in that list – never ever in nine months of being, beside from the spelling thing, totally happy Mac user. Sigh …

Thanks for your help, Sam, you kind of gave birth to the next level of Mac happiness.

[shmulik]

Glad to share suavito--

I just stumbled upon it myself... (and I'm much slower than you--I've been a Mac user for 5 years!)

[verma]

The "multilingual" capabilities are limited, though.

Suppose your document combines a number of different but related languages. Yet in your language-A parts, you want to write perfectly for language-A, and not language-B nor language-C. In your other text sections, ditto.

The multilingual spell checker will check whether or not the words are correctly written, but not if they are in the right language for that portion of your document.

In other words: multilingual means that the different dictionaries are used, but it does not mean that the user can specify which portions of a text belong to which language - and make spell checking dependent on language choice. Which is, all things considered, the rationale of a spell checker.

[Hans-Reinhard Koch]

I do agree. Multilingual is no solution as it will let pass misspellings that might happen to be ok in another language. What we need is true multi-lingual spellchecking with a selectable language for a text portion. And this was discussed at length under http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php?t=790
Regards
Hans-Reinhard

[Eoin]

I totally agree - "Multilingual" is no solution because it is only multilingual for Apple supplied dictionaries.

I have an Aspell dictionary for a minority language which works fine on its own. But switching to "Multilingual" gives English + French + German etc. but ignores the Aspell dictionary.

Eòin

(Mellel 2.2.7.1 / OSX 10.4.10)