FrameMaker 9 spell check problems

[Bluzmann]

I cannot get FrameMaker 9 to "Learn" or "Allow in Document" the name of a product my company makes; iCOMM. Spelled that way, lowercase "i" followed by upper case "COMM."

When I spell check the book, document or current page it always goes to this term. No matter how many times I click on Learn or Allow in Document it keeps on finding fault with the term.

What is especially crazy is the exact same term shows up in the list of possible corrections, so I try clicking on the "Correct" button with the term from the list of possible corrections and that doesn't work either.

Help!

Bluzmann

[Guest]

I did this. One of the Adobe engineers asked for a file.

What I was able to determine was that the spell checking error happens consistently in a paragraph that starts with a font override (i.e., I overrode Franklin Gothic Book with Franklin Gothic Demi).  I don't have time to do enough testing to figure out whether it's ANY override, or if it's something to do with that font, or what.

I'm hoping the development team will tell us. I just sent another document out for review -- admittedly without reading incredibly carefully because it was just a technical review. However, my reviewers are finding spelling errors that the checker should have caught.

This does seem to have cropped up recently for me, although I haven't updated anything lately other than Acrobat.

[Guest]

FYI, I never got the TCS2 to install and run on the Windows 7 32-bit laptop. I'm back on an XP machine, and everything is running and working perfectly. Adobe needs to do something to get it to actually WORK on Windows 7. It's pretty disgraceful that they're selling it and saying that it does. I'm a power user - I almost always have to use RoboHelp and FrameMaker opened at the same time. My IT folks have advised that this is why TCS2 crashes on me every 6 weeks or so. Well, I have NO problems when both are open on XP, so it is apparent that TCS2 does NOT install properly nor run on Windows 7. Come on, Adobe, FIX IT or stop selling it.

Cheers,

Marlo

[Arnis Gubins]

Bluzman,

I tried using the iCOMM and it seems to be working as expected in my configuration. Which point release of FM9 are you using? The latest is p230.

If you allowed the term in your document and you're spell checking the book, then FM will flag the term in other files of the book (each document has it's own Dictionary area where the "Allow in Document" option places these terms). If you select Learn, FM adds this to your personal dictionary, This isn't set up as the older user.dct from FM8 and earlier though.

[Bluzmann]

Using FM9 p230 also.

The Learn and Allow in Document functions seem to be toothless overrides. A function like this should override any and all objections on the part of spell check without having to import or file management.

Dictionaries should also be fully editable; even the lowly MS Word allows the addition of terms to existing dictionaries and creation of new dictionaries all from within program dialog boxes.

[Arnis Gubins]

Bluzman,

FM's user and site dictionaries have always been editable. The full dictionaries are licensed from Proximity and are compiled binaries.

However, I do agree that in FM9 things seem a bit borked with the Spell Checker.

[Bluzmann]

Arnis,

I am having more/similar problems with FM 9's spell check. It also halts on any word followed by "(s)" such as; control(s) or manual(s) etc. The crazy part is it highlights and takes exception with all but the last parenthesis in these entries: it will flag & highlight "control(s" even though there is a second parenthesis directly after the s. See the jpgs attached to this post.

I appreciate your knowledge but having to locate and edit files doesn't sound like a solution "customers" should be forced to do. I can't even find any dict files in the dict folder, there seems to be a hundred or more files in that folder but nothing called site.dict or site.dic etc. I searched the entire hard drive, nadda.

Even if I could locate these files what would I edit them with? How would I add/delete words in one of these files, are we talking syntax in some ini type file where one misplaced coma will cause the program to crash?

Having to do all this with a 900 dollar program is well beyond acceptable. Spell checking when the program is finding fault with things it shouldn't, especially terms used many times is way too time consuming and aggravating. This release seems to be rushed to market without proper testing. I will not use FM9 until Adobe gets it right. I am a professional technical writer. I don't have the time or inclination to jump through all these kinds of hoops to get something as basic as spell check to work properly.

Another point of contention would be the flickering menus. The only real cure for this is to purchase a new computer running Windows Vista with only a handful of approved PC Express video cards installed.

Adobe is getting sloppy and appears to be too much in cahoots with Microsoft (and Intel) in trying to force feed customers an operating system that is the worst since the Windows 95 upgrade disk.

Too much fluff and not enough substance. Professionals need reliability and compatibility.

Bluzman

Message was edited by: Bluzmann

[Bluzmann]

Arnis,

Ok I located the site.dct file and the term iCOMM was in it. If I try to edit this file with Notepad FM9 crashes the next time I try to start and will continue to crash each time I start the program until I remove the changes and resave the site.dct file. Then it starts ok.

Any changes I make to the maker.ini file suggested here cause the prgram to crash every time I start it until I remove any changes and resave the file as mentioned with the site.dct file above.

Creating user.dct files from within the Dictionaries Functions does no good, editing them does not work. Adding unknown words does not work.

Whether the term iCOMM is in any of the dictionary files when viewed with Notepad or not makes no difference. FM9 keeps halting on the term and will not allow it in the document or learn it.

I rebooted FM9 with each change I tried and that did not help.

[Bluzmann]

Something else I've noticed, I can get FM 9 to accept the word iCOMM as long as it doesn't have the trademark symbol ™ against the last M, if I put a space between the last m of iCOMM and the trademark symbol FM 9 is ok with it. Problem is, the trademark symbol belongs up against the last M.

This is repeatable, for me at least, another product term: Cyclone This one FM has no objection with until I put the symbol ® up against the e on the end of Cyclone.

I create the trademark ™ symbol by using the Alt + 0153 keysroke combination and the registered trademark symbol using the Alt + 0174 key stroke combination.

When I copy eihter symbol from the windows character map and paste it behind one of these two terms the FM 9 doesn't take exeception with either.

Problem solved? I don't think so Tim:

First of all I never had to do this in FM 7 or 8, I could use keystroke combinations to create symbols and FM never raised an eyebrow.

Second of all, can you imagine having to launch character map every time you need a symbol?

Third and worst of all when I do this, each time I open a document with the symbols copied/pasted from the character map inside it, FM challenges me saying there are unresolved crossreferences in my document/book AND that there are fonts being used in the document that are not system fonts and FM will have to substitute.

Good grief Charlie Brown this is a pain in the rump!

I'm fed up, I've wasted a half day on this and Adobe isn't signing my check, FM 9 is buggy.

[Guest]

We are seeing this same problem, neither "Allow" or "Learn" works correctly.  Very annoying.  For us, this bug has made the spellcheck unusable.  An example of what we are seeing, in our maintenance manuals we use the phrase "Phillips-tip" screwdriver quite often in our "remove and replace" assembly instructions.  EVERY stinking time, the FM spell check halts on "Phillips."  We can check "Allow" or "Learn" but neither options does anything.  The next instance, it halts yet again.

Another example of very poor performance for this product since Adobe took over.  Rush it out the door, let the paying customers do the QA...

Tim C @ Harris

PS - Don't get anyone at my company started on the "Technical Communications Suite," what a joke that product turned out to be!  We now do our single-sourcing just with RoboHelp, although give Adobe enough time and they'll hose that up too, eventually.

[Writer2244]

p

[Guest]

Hi,

I have not heard anything regarding this problem with FrameMaker's spellcheck. Perhaps Adobe "fixed" this issue during one of their many updates? Not sure, sorry. Typical Adobe customer "service."

Regards,

Tim

[Arnis Gubins]

Tim,

This was addressed in the 9.0.3 patch. IIRC, it is mentioned in the readme PDF file for the patch.

The other issues with the crashes can be resolved by the following:

For the site dictionary, you must have a name, e.g. anything.dict, even if it doesn't exist.

For the hyphen issues, every word, must have a hyphen in the dictionary, even if not needed, e.g. add a hyphen at the start of the word, like "-junkword".

[Guest]

OK, thanks for the info.

Tim

[Arnis Gubins]

More info on dictionary beahviour and setup is finally available from Adobe in this blog entry:

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/12/dictionaries_in_fm9.html

[Guest]

We already had spell checking and hyphenation problems wir V7, V7.2 and now with V9 ... we are frustrated and angry because it's even worse with V9 than with V7.2 ...

We had a complicated routine to add words to our dictionary with V7.2 - now that doesn't work anymore and since we don't understand how spell check ans hyphenation works with V9 we haven't worked out a new routine. The help is rotten, e.g. searching for the name of a button leads to no result. Apart from that the help still isn't context sensitive ...

Right now we're seriously considering importing our FM9 files into another software from a company founded by of a lot of Ex-Adobe employees ... that will be a lot of work but at least we understand how their spell check and hyphenation algorithms work.

We were complaining about spell check and hyphenation and dictionaries for YEARS - to no avail ... obviously making things look good has a high priority - contents and quality doesn't count ...

To get rid of FM for good we're prepared to go a looooong way ... believe me: WE ARE NO FANS OF ADOBE!!! (And this is a VERY british understatement!!!)

[Van Kurtz]

What is the other company?

[Guest]

MadCap.

Didn't write the name because I think it the post will be deleted then.

[hperrin]

I have encountered the same problems. The spell checker in FM9 simply does not work. Here are the problems I have:

1. Even after I tell the spell checker to learn a word, it does not learn it. The same word is repeatedly identified as being mispelled in the same fm file.

2. Even after I tell the spell checker to allow a word in the document, the spell checker continues to flag the word as being mispelled in the same document.

3. On the Spell Check dialog, I click the Dictionaries button and the Dictionary Functions dialog opens. At the bottom of this dialog is this: "C:\Users\...\FMUserDictionary". I can find no such dictionary anywhere on C:\. In fact, I can't locate any FrameMaker dictionaries at all, Personal Dictionary or Document Dictionary. Even if I could locate these supposed dictionaries, the FM9 UI is so atrocious and un-intuitive that I wouldn't know what to do with the dictionary anyway. FM9 Help is no help at all.

The prior version of FM did not have these tedious problems.

Hal Perrin

[Guest]

Hal, what specific version of FM are you using, as shown in Help > About?

[hperrin]

I am using version 9.

I just discovered that there is an update 9.0.3 that addresses part of the problem.

I will download and install all the latest updates and see if that resolves the problem.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

But what's the p level? You should be on p255.

[hperrin]

I just installed updates 9.0.3 and 9.0.4.

Yes, p255 is on the About page.

Is p255 the same as 9.0.4?

I tested the Spelling Checker and problem appears to be resolved.

[Guest]

glad the updates worked, thank you for letting us know.

yes, p255 is the same as 9.0.4. There's a Readme file in the install directory for each update.

[bktripp38]

Frame 9 p255

DITA/Structured

Spell check still doesn't work. Where else can I look to solve this problem?

This has been driving me nuts for months.

Thank you in advance.

Beth

[Guest]

In my case, it turned out that I was applying a character style at the beginning of a paragraph that was NOT set to US English. This caused spelling checking to not work for the whole rest of the paragraph even though it did not use that character style.

Check both your paragraph and character styles to make sure they ALL specify US English, or whatever language you're using.

Hope this helps. I was not using DITA/Structured, just plain vanilla FM.

Jenny