Custom User Dictionaries

Hi @Mike Witherell,

I’m currently checking with the product team to get some clarity on the role of the ATE Hyphenation Exceptions Dictionary and ATE User Dictionary files, as well as whether .NOT files are still relevant or if they've been fully replaced by these newer formats.

I’ll provide you with an update as soon as I hear back from them. Thanks again for raising this, and I’ll keep you posted!

^
Abhishek

Thank you Joel, for engaging this question. Your research has been similar to mine, in that I have found little to read about it.

But in looking at the folder location you mention, I see that there is something new to ask about:

From this folder: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\LocalLow\Adobe\Linguistics\UserDictionaries:

ATE Hyphenation Exceptions Dictionary

ATE User Dictionary

I wonder what these "ATE" dictionaries are? Adobe Type Engine?

I don't know, not at all - I've personally always tried to keep dictionary-related questions far upstream from InDesign. But out of curiousity (I mean, avoiding tedious revision work, and also because I'm supposed to be a Language Guy who knows these kinds of things) I went looking for an answer. I didn't find one, but I did see that both the .not and the .udc file are mentioned as far back as 2002, e.g. in this blog post from that era about InDesign 2.0.

Oddly enough, I found more references to InCopy, and its ".clam" user dictionary file format being discussed next to the ".not" file format, than I found references to InDesign and its own user dictionary file formats. 

The "InDesign CS Bible" (and some other Creative-Suite-era Bibles, penned by Galen Gruman) say at various points that 

On both Mac and Windows, hyphenation exception files have the filename extension .not, while the spelling exception dictionaries have the extension .udc. 

but that's the only place I've been able to find this claim. Also I can't seem to create a .not file when creating hyphenation exceptions using the Dictionary. I can watch the "added.txt"and "exceptions.txt" files in \Adobe\Linguistics\UserDictionaries change in realtime when I add and remove hyphenation exceptions, but there aren't any .not files created at any time. I imagine that this must have seen some developer attention at some point in the intervening quarter-century.