Spell checking and using the thesaurus for multiple languages in the same document
Arbortext Editor enables you to spell check or use the thesaurus for multiple languages in the same document. The default language is determined by the language dictionary selected in the spelling preferences. However, you can set a language attribute on individual tags to have the content of those tags checked using the dictionary for a specific language. The language attribute for a document is determined in the following way:
• If the document has an associated Arbortext Styler.style file, the language attribute of the one designated in that stylesheet.
• Otherwise, the attribute is the one designated in the document type configuration (.dcf) file for the document’s document type.
• Otherwise, the attribute is xml:lang for XML documents and lang for SGML documents.
If no language attribute is set on an tag, then the value is inherited from the closest ancestor that sets the language. If no language is set anywhere in the tag’s ancestors, then the preference language is used in all cases.
When you set the language attribute to a specific language code (for example, xml:lang=”fr”), then the spell checker and thesaurus uses the language dictionary for the designated language to check the content of that tag. If a tag specifies a language that is not supported, then that tag’s content is not spell checked. Also, a word with characters not expected in the current language (such as a Thai or Chinese word in an English paragraph) is ignored and will not be flagged as a misspelling.