How to add a medical dictionary to pages ?

Hi Chris,

You can teach your Pages spell checker. Try this: Menu > Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Check Spelling While Typing

Double click on the word that Pages does not recognise,

Menu > Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar > Learn

Regards,

Ian.

The original all-unicode.dic file is a UTF-16 with BOM and crlf line endings. I have had time to study the proper Python way to generate a UTF-8 output dictionary with the byte order marking stripped, and the crlf replaced with lf. Makes for a nice text file that can contain accents.

I noticed that the Hunspell dictionary likes a word count as the first line, but even this did not get this working on this end.

Update.

• The converted UTF-8 text Medical.dic and Medical.aff files are in home/Library/Spelling.
• In the System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Automatic by Language > Setup…, I dragged the Medical (Library) entry up just below the English categories, which is also verifiable via Pages v5.2.2 on Mavericks 10.9.5.
• I just performed a Safe Boot, and using Disk Utility from the Recovery partition, verified/repaired permissions and the drive.

  Additionally, I removed the contents of home/Library/Caches.

• Pages '09 v4.3 (10.9.5)
  • If in the Text Inspector > More > Languages, I explicity pick the Medical (Library) menu entry, then I can enter correct, or incorrect medical terms with the proper behavior. Incorrect terms will show the correct spelling as the top-most entry on the contextual menu.
  • If I select All Languages, expecting English and Medical (Library) inclusive spell checking, then it fails to catch/correct/guess correct, and incorrect medical terms.
  • (10.10.2) The Medical spell check is neither tolerant of properly spelled terms, nor does it offer alternative spellings for misspelled terms, even when the Medical (Library) entry is directly selected.
• Pages v5.2.2 (10.9.5)

  Same issues as Pages '09 v4.3. Automatic by Language in the Spell Checker does not identify the Medical dictionary, but explicitly selecting it will accept correct spelling, and offer the right spelling among alternates on the contextual menu, or in the Show Spelling and Grammar panel.

• Pages v5.5.2 (10.10.2)

  Drag/dropped Medical.dic into home/Library/Spelling, and made empty Medical.aff file. Enabled in System Preferences.

  No acceptance for correctly spelled medical terms, and no alternates offered when spell check languages set to all. No change when explicity set to Medical (Library) dictionary.

The following was performed on Mavericks 10.9.5, with Pages '09 v4.3, and Pages v5.2.2.

I just retrieved a Medical dictionary from here. It is intended for use with MS Word, or OpenOffice, and contains 66,239 terms. By double-clicking on the .zip file, a all-unicode.dic file becomes available. It is a binary encoded file. Plopping this all-unicode.dic file into home/Library/Spelling, logging out/rebooting, and attempting to catch spelling errors in either Pages did not work.

So, I thought, ok — perhaps it is supposed to be text as is the LocalDictionary file in the above location. I wrote a very short Python script to convert it from UTF-16 to a UTF-8 text file (so accented characters would survive), and used this as Med.dic. Again, logging out, or rebooting, did not change either Pages' ability to correct mispellings of known terms in this Medical dictionary file.

#!/usr/bin/python

import codecs

# read in a binary leximed medical terms dictionary intended for MS-Word

# write out a utf-8 text file

f = codecs.open('all-unicode.dic', 'r', 'utf-16')

fo = codecs.open('Medical.dic', 'w', 'utf-8')

for l in f.readlines():

fo.write(l.replace('\0', ''))

Next, I saved a copy of the home/Library/Spellings/LocalDictionary file. Using TextEdit, I added the Medical dictionary content to the end of the existing LocalDictionary content, and then resorted alphabetically. Removed Med.dic from home/Library/Spellings, and added back the updated LocalDictionary file. Rebooted. Neither Pages would fix deliberate medical term mispellings, and would only offer to guess.

Tom, any further thoughts?

That .dic file isn't binary encoded, it is an ordinary utf-16 text file. Are you able to see it in the list of dictionaries in either system prefs/keyboard/text/spelling or inspector/text/more/language or edit/spelling and grammar/show spelling and grammar? will try it myself later....

I tried the untouched all-unicode.dic alone first. That didn't work for me. Not seeing it in the customary Pages '09 or v5 places.

When I did a file -b all-unicode.dic, it returned:

Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode text, with CRLF line terminators

I can make it just Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode text by exporting LANG=C, and then using tr '\r' '\n' < all-unicode.dic > medical.dic.

Tom,

I touched the .aff file in the name of the home/Library/Spelling/Medical.dic file. Whether the Medical.dic file was the original all-unicode.dic source, or the utf-16 output of my revised Python program — I now have a Medical (Library) entry in the language menu for Pages '09 v4.3 and Pages v5.2.2. I also added Medical in the Spelling: Language Setup in System Preferences ▸ Keyboard ▸ Text Spelling.

That is all the good news to report. In either Pages' document, there still is no medical spell checking, and the contextual menu only offers the "No Guesses Found" entry. Correct spellings, and bogus spellings are both flagged as errors. Frustrating.

I might add that the utf-16 text Medical.dic is weighing in at 1.7MB. Does this exceed the allowable user spelling dictionary size for OS X?

I have a Turkish .dic file which has exactly the same format has as all-unicode.dic (after conversion to utf-8) and does the right thing (no underline of correct words, underline with suggestions available for incorrect words). I'm mystified why the medical list does not work.

Tom,

I just spent the last couple of hours methodically looking for all those different space and hidden characters in this UTF-8 medical.dic file. Found nothing out of the ordinary. Ended with a newline, and removed that, but made no difference. Ack!

Things are not looking up for Medical spell check with any release of Pages on Yosemite. Here is an article that in detail, shows how to add a Medical spell check dictionary to Word in Office for Mac 2011. I believe the dictionary used in the example was last updated in 2008. It is the process, not necessarily a specific dictionary. If you are affilitated with academia, you may qualify for reduced pricing on this office suite.

I just installed the MS Office for Mac 2015/2016 preview into Yosemite. The unconverted all-unicode.dic Medical dictionary not only changed its icon, but it was a drop in solution for the new Word that worked as it should, ignoring correct spellings, and flagging/offering corrective suggestions/auto-correcting the deliberately misspelled medical terms.

Additional dictionary support is through the Word Preferences panel.

Apparently, this MS Office Preview release keeps everything (including fonts) in the respective Application bundles for a very clean install. It is 2.66 Gb to download, and over 5GB for installation.

For adding entire dictionaries, see

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2011/06/extra-spell-checking-dictionaries-for.html

but whether autocorrect will handle such 3rd party additions properly I don't know

Try making a dummy .aff file with the same name. I think OS X may need both to recognize the dictionary.

I've had time to try it now, but can't make it work either. Will check if it is different from other dictionaries I have.