Can I check via applescript if a word is not in my default Language Dictionary?
i.e get a word that will be red-dot-underlined in say TextEdit because it is NOT in British English Dictionary (my selected language) OR in my User dictionary (my learned words)?
Reason I ask is because I’m writing a utility that will import a text doc & automatically add all red-underlined words into the User dictionary. Naturally I can read & write to the User dictionary file (in ~/Library/Spelling), but where is Applespell’s British English dictionary, & can I access it in plain text?
set BritishEnglishDictionaryWords to {"some", "random", "and", "many", "more"}
set myCustomDictionary to {"innit"}
set myText to "Some random malarky, innit!"
set myTextWords to words of myText
set UnknownWords to {}
repeat with i from 1 to count of myTextWords
if (item i of myTextWords is not in BritishEnglishDictionaryWords) and (item i of myTextWords is not in myCustomDictionary) then
set UnknownWords to UnknownWords & (item i of myTextWords)
end if
end repeat
get UnknownWords
just need to generate BritishEnglishDictionaryWords…?
Hopefully helpful. I don’t know if websters is American English or British English. Nor have I checked for specific versions at the path below, maybe you are in luck. And I’m not confident that text-edit uses Websters directly, I just hope there is something there you can use; at least that Websters contain the British spelling of your variant (not invariant) words.
You can play a little with the line below to find it either working, or not working for you, (and have a look inside that dict folder).
set searchresult to (do shell script "grep " & searchWord & " /usr/share/dict/web2 ")
Webster’s is definitely not British English! :lol: It’s historically responsible for American spellings and thus for many of the wince-inducing things we have to write in computer scripts and ” er ” programs.
Hmmm… it’s working close enough to use Webber’s Dictionary.
I’ve got this:
--LOOK UP IN WEBBER'S DICTIONARY
on LookUpInWebbers(someword)
try
set searchresult to (do shell script "grep " & someword & " /usr/share/dict/web2 ")
on error
set searchresult to ""
end try
set searchresultWords to words of searchresult
if someword is in searchresultWords then
return true
else
return false
end if
end LookUpInWebbers
The problems is that Webber’s dictionary doesn’t include plurals of nouns!!!
So it matches “pie” but not “pies”
set importData to "Groober's pies taste... minging!"
set importData_words to words of importData
set UnknownWords to {}
repeat with i from 1 to count of importData_words
if my LookUpInWebbers(item i of importData_words) is false then
set UnknownWords to UnknownWords & (item i of importData_words)
end if
end repeat
get UnknownWords
The above wants to add {“Groober’s”, “pies”, “minging”}
(“minging” is already in the User dictionary, so will be dealt with later.)
I can try testing for words ending in s stripped of the s:
--LOOK UP IN WEBBER'S DICTIONARY
on LookUpInWebbers(someword)
try
set searchresult to (do shell script "grep " & someword & " /usr/share/dict/web2 ")
on error
set searchresult to ""
end try
set searchresultWords to words of searchresult
if someword is in searchresultWords then
return true
else
--maybe plural?
if character (count of someword) of someword is "s" then --word ends in "s"...
--...so see if word stripped of "s" is in dictionary
set someword_singlular to text 1 thru ((count of someword) - 1) of someword
try
set searchresult to (do shell script "grep " & someword_singlular & " /usr/share/dict/web2 ")
on error
set searchresult to ""
end try
set searchresultWords to words of searchresult
if someword_singlular is in searchresultWords then
return true
else
return false
end if
else
return false
end if
end if
end LookUpInWebbers
…but this is cumbersome, & it’s bound to misfire on some words. (Mouses?)
