lyx language defaults and dictionaries

John Jefferies · Post by **John Jefferies** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:07 am

Hello, I'm new to Lyx, I'm using v2.1.3 (latest) on Windows. I did what I think was a vanilla install. I'm British with my OS language settings at UK English.

When I tried to use the dictionary and thesaurus, they didn't work because they weren't found. I solved the problems with these Preferences settings:

Paths/Hunsell dictionaries: C:\Program Files (x86)\LyX 2.1\Resources\dicts
Paths/Thesaurus: C:\Program Files (x86)\LyX 2.1\Resources\thes
Language Settings/Alternative Language: en_GB

None of these were set after the install (I'm pretty sure, but I did experiments for several hours trying to get it to work).

A few things confused (greatly) me along the way:
- the documentation at http://www.lyx.org/AdditionalSoftware says that Lyx doesn't ship with thesaurus dictionaries. That isn't true, the GB thesaurus was installed.
- Even when I had the paths correct, the dictionary kept on using the US version even though I selected the UK version in the spell-checker dialog. I had to set the Alternative Language to make it use the UK dictionary.
- When the spell-checker dialog says it's using the English language, it's not clear which flavour of English, UK or US or whatever.
- The errors reported to the user are not always helpful, e.g. "Spell-check of the selection done, did not find any errors" when what is meant is that the dictionary wasn't found.

Finally, let me say that I appreciate the efforts of the team, I know it's a complex product.

John

NEW: TikZ book now 40% off at Amazon.com for a short time.

And: Currently, Packt sells ebooks for $4.99 each if you buy 5 of their over 1000 ebooks. If you choose only a single one, $9.99. How about combining 3 LaTeX books with Python, gnuplot, mathplotlib, Matlab, ChatGPT or other AI books? Epub and PDF. Bundle (3 books, add more for higher discount): https://packt.link/MDH5p

Wallstone · Post by **Wallstone** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:51 pm

John, I want to thank you for this excellent post. It was driving me crazy that LyX 2.1 had access to Enchant, Aspell, and Hunspell, but had no MyThes dictionary, despite OpenLibre using it all the time.

Your suggestions caused me to look at the program paths under preferences, and there it was -- nothing defined for Thesaurus Dictionary at all. I'm guessing this was an oversight of the LyX programmers, as I didn't have this problem with earlier versions. It's minor, but a bit annoying.

Anyway, thanks again!

- Danny

Post by **scottkosty** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 2:04 am

Wallstone wrote:John, I want to thank you for this excellent post. It was driving me crazy that LyX 2.1 had access to Enchant, Aspell, and Hunspell, but had no MyThes dictionary, despite OpenLibre using it all the time.

Your suggestions caused me to look at the program paths under preferences, and there it was -- nothing defined for Thesaurus Dictionary at all. I'm guessing this was an oversight of the LyX programmers, as I didn't have this problem with earlier versions. It's minor, but a bit annoying.

Anyway, thanks again!

- Danny

Sounds like a bug. We can't fix it if we don't know about it. Please report it at http://www.lyx.org/trac

This way we can fix it for 2.2.0 (hopefully out in a few months). Thanks!

Scott

Wallstone · Post by **Wallstone** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 5:03 am

Thanks, Scott. I did as you suggested: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9496. This is the first bug ticket I've ever issued. Boy, ain't I special? LOL!

This particular is very minor, but a bit annoying, and could simply be a version thing. If they can't fix it due to an inability to find the path, then a Check Settings error message or some such should do the trick.

- Danny

Post by **scottkosty** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 10:03 pm

Wallstone wrote:Thanks, Scott. I did as you suggested: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9496. This is the first bug ticket I've ever issued. Boy, ain't I special? LOL!

This particular is very minor, but a bit annoying, and could simply be a version thing. If they can't fix it due to an inability to find the path, then a Check Settings error message or some such should do the trick.

- Danny

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do that Danny. I hope you'll continue making bug reports cause I think high quality bug reports (lots of details) are the most important thing to an open source project. Sometimes "minor" bugs are just as important to report as major bugs because they might be easier to fix.

Scott

Wallstone · Post by **Wallstone** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 2:19 am

You're certainly welcome, Scott. I've found that in some programs, minor errors can be signs of a larger bug that hasn't reared its ugly head yet. Since I just started to learn C, that so far has been only on my programs, but...

- Danny

Post by **scottkosty** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 2:51 am

Wallstone wrote:You're certainly welcome, Scott. I've found that in some programs, minor errors can be signs of a larger bug that hasn't reared its ugly head yet. Since I just started to learn C, that so far has been only on my programs, but...

- Danny

I completely agree! And even if they are minor, I think that whether a user gets a "smooth" experience depends on a million super minor bugs being fixed.

Scott

LaTeX.org

LyX ⇒ lyx language defaults and dictionaries