Illegal handling of Greek Characters in Speller (Office 2008)

[tsalidis]

Hi

I want to use a custom dictionary with Greek words from all the Office
applications. Word & Power Point use it properly, meaning that they
correctly recognize the words in the custom dictionary signifying all
other words as erroneous.
Unfortunately Entourage and Excel does not handle Greek characters
properly. They did not pass greek words to speller. Excel passes only
the greek character pi while Entourage ignores all greek characters.
It seems that these apps filter out greek characters and does not send
them to apps. Thesaurus seems that is handling greek characters
correctly in all apps.

Any idea or help?

 

[John McGhie]

No "Help", but I can tell you why...

Word and PowerPoint switch "languages" in the text when you switch
keyboards. So the text you type from he Greek keyboard is marked with the
Greek language and spelled in Greek.

Entourage and Excel do not support multiple text languages, and they do not
mark the language of the text in the text stream. The language you specify
in the preferences for those applications applies to the whole file.

It doesn't help, but at least you now know why...

Hi

I want to use a custom dictionary with Greek words from all the Office
applications. Word & Power Point use it properly, meaning that they
correctly recognize the words in the custom dictionary signifying all
other words as erroneous.
Unfortunately Entourage and Excel does not handle Greek characters
properly. They did not pass greek words to speller. Excel passes only
the greek character pi while Entourage ignores all greek characters.
It seems that these apps filter out greek characters and does not send
them to apps. Thesaurus seems that is handling greek characters
correctly in all apps.

Any idea or help?

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[tsalidis]

Thanks for the try.

I am sure that this is a bug in these two apps. It is correct that the
language is applied to the whole doc but this is not the problem.
Try the following. Write a few greek words in an excel sheet (i hope
you can) like the ones in the list (ðÜëé, ððð Ýíáò). Calling the
speller, the words containing greek letter pi (ð) presented with only
the pi letter in the spell dialog. All other characters are missing.
The word with three pi (ððð) appears correctly. This means that excel
passes only pi from greek chars to the speller. If the greek word
contains two nonconsecutive pi then the speller presents the first as
unknown word and then the second as a different unknown word
considering the characters between the two pi as space chars. If
instead of greek chars you put english chars between two
nonconsecutive pi then the whole word is correctly passed to speller
and handled normally.
In Entourage not even the pi is passed to speller. Greek chars
considered as empty space.

 

[cine_kofi]

Hi! Can i ask you were you got the greek dictionary from? I really
need it. I have office 2008 for Mac v. 12.0

 

[John McGhie]

Well, I can't write Greek at all So I am afraid that if you want us to
test this, you need to send me some correctly-spelled and capitalised Greek,
and dome that is not, and tell us which is which

I suspect that ? gets special handling, because it is commonly-used in
English as a mathematical symbol.

It is entirely possible that you are correct: it's a bug. But we don't know
this, and unless we can research it and prove it, it will never be fixed
because Microsoft will never know about it.

Entourage has extra limitations: it can spell in only one language, and the
language is not marked in the text, it is set in the preferences.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the try.

I am sure that this is a bug in these two apps. It is correct that the
language is applied to the whole doc but this is not the problem.
Try the following. Write a few greek words in an excel sheet (i hope
you can) like the ones in the list (????, ??? ????). Calling the
speller, the words containing greek letter pi (?) presented with only
the pi letter in the spell dialog. All other characters are missing.
The word with three pi (???) appears correctly. This means that excel
passes only pi from greek chars to the speller. If the greek word
contains two nonconsecutive pi then the speller presents the first as
unknown word and then the second as a different unknown word
considering the characters between the two pi as space chars. If
instead of greek chars you put english chars between two
nonconsecutive pi then the whole word is correctly passed to speller
and handled normally.
In Entourage not even the pi is passed to speller. Greek chars
considered as empty space.

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry, the English version does not contain a Greek dictionary.

See if you can find a Greek version of Microsoft Office for Mac here:
http://office.microsoft.com/el-gr/FX100647101032.aspx

Since I can't read Greek, I have a small problem there

Cheers

Hi! Can i ask you were you got the greek dictionary from? I really
need it. I have office 2008 for Mac v. 12.0

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Diane Ross]

Entourage has extra limitations: it can spell in only one language, and the
language is not marked in the text, it is set in the preferences.

See these articles by Corentin Cras-Méneur on using a third party
application with Entourage for those that use multiple languages.

Spell-checking done right

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/08/spellchecking_done_right_1.html>

Badd badd Speling

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/07/badd_badd_speling.html>

 

[Office 2004 Test Drive User]

It will be present here www.neurolingo.gr in a few weeks

 

[Office 2004 Test Drive User]

Thanks for the try to help. The ? are the Greek characters I wrote to the
email but because you missing the fonts and language pack you cannot see
them. The problem described from a user perspective view. It is very easy to
be proved by anyone having the capability to write greek text.

Despite this I can prove it technically to Microsoft because I develop
spellers for MS Office and I can see what characters passed to speller from
all the MS Applications. Our speller is mixed English-Greek and I can see
that all English characters passed correctly to speller. Only greek
characters from Entourage and Excel that have this behaviour.

If you can help by passing this to Microsoft it will be perfect. The MS
Office 2008 for Mac has all the characteristics to be the best Office
Application for greek writing.

 

[Office 2004 Test Drive User]

Thanks for try. I am not searching for greek dictionary. I already have one
(I am a developer). The bug I described concerns the two apps of MS Office
and how they handle greek characters. I present is as a general problem
assuming that someone wants to have a small custom dictionary with greek
words. It is not possible to do this in Excel & Entourage and it can do it
in Word & Power Point. This is the problem and it can be easily reproduced.
unfortunately the link you send does not help at all. The local distributors
does not support Mac versions of MS Software.

Regards

 

[Office 2004 Test Drive User]

Totally different approach. I took a look in this Adidote (a greek word). I
know many programs following the same approach. It can be applied in cases
we have UI functionality with lexicon browsing etc.

Personally I prefer the full integration with MS Office developing proofing
tools for the language we are interested.
We encounter the problem of single language support of apps like Entourage
by incorporating english (or french) dictionaries inside the dictionary of
speller (one engine many dictionaries) and discovering the language of the
word inside the engine. This gives better feeling and productivity for the
user.

Cheers

 

[John McGhie]

I didn't get any ? characters: I have all the Greek "characters" here. I
just can't read Greek

If you use Send Feedback from the Help menu in any Office 2008 application,
you are talking directly to the Microsoft developers.

If you want me to speak to the developers for you, you need to provide
documented examples I can show them. If I say to them "Oh, anyone who can
read and write Greek can prove this!" they will say "OK. We'll wait until
they do."

I will be in Mac BU Redmond next month. If I have your examples, I can show
them to the person who designs the mechanism. If I don't, I can't.

Cheers

Thanks for the try to help. The ? are the Greek characters I wrote to the
email but because you missing the fonts and language pack you cannot see
them. The problem described from a user perspective view. It is very easy to
be proved by anyone having the capability to write greek text.

Despite this I can prove it technically to Microsoft because I develop
spellers for MS Office and I can see what characters passed to speller from
all the MS Applications. Our speller is mixed English-Greek and I can see
that all English characters passed correctly to speller. Only greek
characters from Entourage and Excel that have this behaviour.

If you can help by passing this to Microsoft it will be perfect. The MS
Office 2008 for Mac has all the characteristics to be the best Office
Application for greek writing.

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]