Bug du jour #4: Custom dictionary selection oddity

[etcstgo]

In the Spelling and Grammar preferences window, the Custom dictionary
drop-down menu correctly shows the three custom dictionaries I have
and use. Two are English, one is Spanish.

To the right of the above drop-down menu there is the
"Dictionaries..." button used to open the custom dictionary selection
window. That's were you create, add, remove, edit or define the
language assignment of custom dictionaries.

Under Word 2008 (12.1.0), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button is
producing strange results.

Although the above drop-down menu continues to list custom
dictionaries as active and available (confirmed by running a spell
check), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button to open the Custom
Dictionaries window reveals that check boxes next to the custom
dictionary list are all deselected. As in made inactive. As in no
check marks.

An attempt to click on any check box instantly brings up the following
error: "You have deselected the first dictionary in the list. [No, I
haven't]. Please note that changing this may affect the default
dictionary used by other Microsoft applications."

If I cancel out of the error window, all three check boxes instantly
acquire a check mark. If I click OK instead, check boxes remain
deselected. Although this does not seem to affect the availability of
custom dictionaries, either behavior is incorrect and confusing.

This happens consistently and can be repeated at will.

Anyone else seeing this?

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

Did you use Help>Send Feedback to send this in to Microsoft -- or are they
still unaware of this bug?

Cheers

In the Spelling and Grammar preferences window, the Custom dictionary
drop-down menu correctly shows the three custom dictionaries I have
and use. Two are English, one is Spanish.

To the right of the above drop-down menu there is the
"Dictionaries..." button used to open the custom dictionary selection
window. That's were you create, add, remove, edit or define the
language assignment of custom dictionaries.

Under Word 2008 (12.1.0), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button is
producing strange results.

Although the above drop-down menu continues to list custom
dictionaries as active and available (confirmed by running a spell
check), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button to open the Custom
Dictionaries window reveals that check boxes next to the custom
dictionary list are all deselected. As in made inactive. As in no
check marks.

An attempt to click on any check box instantly brings up the following
error: "You have deselected the first dictionary in the list. [No, I
haven't]. Please note that changing this may affect the default
dictionary used by other Microsoft applications."

If I cancel out of the error window, all three check boxes instantly
acquire a check mark. If I click OK instead, check boxes remain
deselected. Although this does not seem to affect the availability of
custom dictionaries, either behavior is incorrect and confusing.

This happens consistently and can be repeated at will.

Anyone else seeing this?

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Just FYI: In Word 12.0.1, I have two custom dictionaries, both English
(actually I just duplicated the first one in the finder and activated it).

Both show up as checked when I visit the Dictionaries... dialog.

Are you seeing this as new in SP1, or were you not testing Word before?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Oops. Language on both is set to None, not English.

Just FYI: In Word 12.0.1, I have two custom dictionaries, both English
(actually I just duplicated the first one in the finder and activated
it).

Both show up as checked when I visit the Dictionaries... dialog.

Are you seeing this as new in SP1, or were you not testing Word before?

In the Spelling and Grammar preferences window, the Custom dictionary
drop-down menu correctly shows the three custom dictionaries I have
and use. Two are English, one is Spanish.

To the right of the above drop-down menu there is the
"Dictionaries..." button used to open the custom dictionary selection
window. That's were you create, add, remove, edit or define the
language assignment of custom dictionaries.

Under Word 2008 (12.1.0), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button is
producing strange results.

Although the above drop-down menu continues to list custom
dictionaries as active and available (confirmed by running a spell
check), clicking on the "Dictionaries..." button to open the Custom
Dictionaries window reveals that check boxes next to the custom
dictionary list are all deselected. As in made inactive. As in no
check marks.

An attempt to click on any check box instantly brings up the following
error: "You have deselected the first dictionary in the list. [No, I
haven't]. Please note that changing this may affect the default
dictionary used by other Microsoft applications."

If I cancel out of the error window, all three check boxes instantly
acquire a check mark. If I click OK instead, check boxes remain
deselected. Although this does not seem to affect the availability of
custom dictionaries, either behavior is incorrect and confusing.

This happens consistently and can be repeated at will.

Anyone else seeing this?

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[etcstgo]

John:

Did you use Help>Send Feedback to send this in to Microsoft -- or are they
still unaware of this bug?

I have reported nothing yet. I'm hoping to gather corroboration first.

Daiya:

Are you seeing this as new in SP1, or were you not testing Word before?

This is new in 12.1.0.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[etcstgo]

Further to my post:

Although the behavior I describe is new to Word 2008 12.1.0, I've just
recalled that Custom dictionaries windows have long displayed other
oddities. My Custom dictionaries window from Word 2004, for example,
displays several "ghost dictionaries" removed long ago that simply
refuse to die. Since they do not exist, they cannot be checkmarked.

You can try to remove them using the "Remove" button, but they will be
there the next time the window is opened. The inability to clear these
"ghost" dictionaries goes back many years, through several versions of
Word.

If you are curious, I have posted screenshots here: http://www.ics.cl/icsweb/movs/.

Could these two issues, one going back several years and never
addressed -probably never even noticed- another just rearing its head
now, possibly be connected?

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

I wouldn't wait: There are a series of "Language" bugs, and they are highly
specific to the languages set in the OS, Dictionaries, and Document.

The fact that you can reproduce it in your environment is sufficient. The
chances are the bug simply won't reproduce in any flavour of English.

Cheers

John:


I have reported nothing yet. I'm hoping to gather corroboration first.

Daiya:


This is new in 12.1.0.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[etcstgo]

Hi Patricio:

I wouldn't wait:  There are a series of "Language" bugs, and they are highly
specific to the languages set in the OS, Dictionaries, and Document.

Ok, I'll report it.

The fact that you can reproduce it in your environment is sufficient.  The
chances are the bug simply won't reproduce in any flavour of English.

This bug would have to be specific only to the language set in the
dictionaries.

If you looked at the screenshots I posted, you may have noticed that
my OS language is set to English (as a translator, the quality of the
Spanish localization makes me cringe). In addition, this happens no
matter what language the particular document is set to, or in what
order (or language) custom dictionaries are arranged.

If this can happen under English with any document, I wonder why it's
not being reported more widely.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

What we are finding is that the language(s) available to the OS seem to have
a large bearing on this.

I am not sure that the language set in the dictionary has much to do with
it. That's a flag that comes into play only when Word is looking to write
an addition and wondering which dictionary to put it in. It will then
cruise down the list of active dictionaries and add to the first dictionary
it finds whose language matches the language marked on the text from which
the word to be added was copied.

Which is why the bottom dictionary in the set must always be marked with "No
Language", otherwise you will potentially leave Word with no place to write
an addition.

We have just been through all this with French/Belgian. The Canadians
didn't get it, but the French still have a raft of issues.

The whole Language mechanism is a train-wreck. But it's a design Mac Word
has inherited from Word PC. So they can't throw the whole thing out and
start again, they have to find a way to make this mechanism work

If Mac BU changed it all so our documents wouldn't work on the PC, you can
imagine the (entirely justified...) screams that would ensue.

Cheers

Ok, I'll report it.


This bug would have to be specific only to the language set in the
dictionaries.

If you looked at the screenshots I posted, you may have noticed that
my OS language is set to English (as a translator, the quality of the
Spanish localization makes me cringe). In addition, this happens no
matter what language the particular document is set to, or in what
order (or language) custom dictionaries are arranged.

If this can happen under English with any document, I wonder why it's
not being reported more widely.

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[etcstgo]

Hi Patricio:

Which is why the bottom dictionary in the set must always be marked with "No
Language", otherwise you will potentially leave Word with no place to write
an addition.

This may be true in a strictly unilingual setting. But when you work
in two or more languages, failure to specify a language is a recipe
for disaster, for the simple reason that what may be a legitimate term
in one language may be a serious error in another. If a spellcheck
fails to flag these because you haven't specified a language, unless
you have a keen editor's eye you may well be led to inadvertently
produce reams of text containing egregious mistakes.

The whole Language mechanism is a train-wreck.  But it's a design Mac Word
has inherited from Word PC.  So they can't throw the whole thing out and
start again, they have to find a way to make this mechanism work

Since they've been at it for the past decade, I wish them godspeed.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

In my experience, in ANY language, you MUST have one dictionary set to "No
language"; or 79 dictionaries, one for every available language.

Otherwise, you WILL get hangs and crashes when Word ends up unable to write
the word to any custom dictionary.

Yes, I take your point that when working in multiple languages, the user
really has to keep their mind on the job. Working with multiple flavours of
English is just a PITA, because you get documents coming in with American,
British and Canadian and maintaining the custom dictionaries is continual
hassle.

But if you don't have one custom dictionary open to a write from "any"
language, you will get problems. Note: You have to cover every language
available in Microsoft, not the limited subset available in Mac Word: Word
can read and write languages it doesn't natively support...

Cheers

This may be true in a strictly unilingual setting. But when you work
in two or more languages, failure to specify a language is a recipe
for disaster, for the simple reason that what may be a legitimate term
in one language may be a serious error in another. If a spellcheck
fails to flag these because you haven't specified a language, unless
you have a keen editor's eye you may well be led to inadvertently
produce reams of text containing egregious mistakes.



Since they've been at it for the past decade, I wish them godspeed.

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[etcstgo]

Hi Patricio:

In my experience, in ANY language, you MUST have one dictionary set to "No
language"; or 79 dictionaries, one for every available language.

Otherwise, you WILL get hangs and crashes when Word ends up unable to write
the word to any custom dictionary.

If a custom dictionary for a particular language doesn't exist, the
"Add" button will be greyed out.

No hangs or crashes can result from an action that cannot even be
initiated.