This repository contains 3 files needed in Affinity Publisher for hyphenation and spell-checking of the Finnish language on Windows computers. These files have been forked from https://www.apt-browse.org/browse/debian/wheezy/main/all/myspell-fi/0.7-18/file/usr/share/hunspell. At the moment, hunspell dictionary found in that apt repository contains some repeating and unsorted word blocks. These have been removed in this Github repository. Mac users may need hyphenation dictionary because the automatic hyphenation language choise in Affinity Publisher does not work as expected.
The fi_FI.aff file contains basic information how Finnish words are constructed. In the beginning, there is an instruction to set a correct character set. Original affix file uses ISO8859-1 encoding. According to tests, I have been able to conduct that its works well with Finnish Windows 10. Further testing will be made with different operating systems and language versions in the future. Latest macOS versions have builtin support for Finnish language and there is no need for an additional spelling dictionary. But automatic hyphenation needs a dictionary. Only hyphenation dictionary hyph_fi_FI.dic is needed. Do not install other Hunspell dictionaries to your Mac. Instructions can be found on Wiki pages. There may be other sources of these files with UTF8 encoding. In those files, the character setting on 1st row must be SET ISO8859-1 to make spelling and hyphenation function properly. Wrong character encoding settings may add duplicate suggestions or display strange characters. The following screen shot shows correct suggestions when using dictionaries downloaded from this repository:
There is a tool for updating Finish spelling dictionary. You can add new words, import words from Joukahainen dictionary and maintain your dictionary with the Spelling Maintenance Tool. Insturctions to use the tool are found on Wiki pages or tool's Help menu. Language in the tool is Finnish only assuming that users publishing in Finnish can understand it.
New words can be typed to Lisättävä sana field (1). By hitting the enter key the word will be added to a list of words Sanaluettelo (2). By pressing buttons (3) words will be saved to the spelling dictionary. Tallenna valitut will save sellected words from the list and Tallenna kaiki will save all words in the list. By double clicking a word in the list will remove it from the list(2) and put it back to input field (1). Word can be deleted with keys or by pressing the x symbol in the field.
The fi_FI.dic file is a collection of Finnish words. There is a word counter at the beginning of the file. Affinity Publisher does not maintain this file. If you teach new words to Publisher, they are stored outside of this file. You can add words to this file with the Spelling Maintenance Tool. Spelling tool in Affinity publisher can suggest some words to be inserted. Suggestions are based on a affix file fi_FI.aff. Due to the limitations in hunspell's algorithms it does not work very well with Finnish language. This is the reason why user must add words all the time to spelling dictionary or to Affinity Publishers custom dictionary. Saddly Publisher reads the spelling dictionary at the startup. When words are added to the spelling dictionary you musta restart Publisher in order to recognise those words.
The hyph_fi_FI.dic file contains instructions how to split words for hyphenation. There is also a character set definition on the 1st row. To hyphenate correctly this file must be installed to a certain folder in your system.
You can download dictionary files by clicking the green Code button on the top right-hand corner. Unzip the contents to Affinity's Dictionaries folder. In Windows you can find this location in Affinity Publisher, through Edit - Preferences - Tools. You can also use the Windows installer of the maintenance software to get dictionary files. The install will create a folder for dictionaries and you can then copy files to the Affinity's dictionary folder with Explorer or command line tools. Unfortunately there is no installer for Mac users.
Open the folder by clicking Open then copy the unzipped dictonary files. In Windows copy fi_FI.aff, fi_FI.dic and hyph_fi_FI.dic to a folder named as fi_FI. If you are using Mac computer copy only hyph_fi_FI.dic to folder named as fi-FI.
In Mac computers (as macOS Ventura 13.1) put the hyphention file into folder fi-Fi. You must create this forlder first. For the correct path see the following picture:
💡 Dictionaries can also be used with previous version of Affinity Publisher in Windows. First create a folder for dictionaries named
fi_FIunder dictionaries folder which is normallyC:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\DictionariesFor more information see this forum post . Dictionaries can also be used with various other writing or Desktop Publishing applications using Hunspell's spelling or hyphenation.
⚠️ When you install dictionaries keep in mind that in Windows dictionaries must reside in folderfi_FI(with underscore) underDictionariesand in MacOS it should be namedfi-FI(with hyphen)!
The structure of fi_FI.dic is very simple: On the 1st row there is a word counter, and the rest contain words in an alphabetical order, one word per row. The purpose of this repository is to provide simple tools for adding, sorting, and removing duplicates from the spelling dictionary. With appropriate tools, the dictionary can be maintained and expanded to meet our requirements. All tools can be used from a single GUI. You can add words to the speling dictonary, maintain integrity of the dictionary and import words from Joukahainen dictionary. It is a xml based dictionary used in Voikko spell checker. It contains thousands of words not found in the original hunspell dictionary. It can be found and downloaded from https://joukahainen.puimula.org/. For more information about the tool see https://github.com/MikaVainio/AffinityPublisherFISpelling/wiki/Ohje-suomeksi. There are installation and usage information in Finnish. To load the tool see releases section on the right side of this page (or at the bottom if you are browsing with a smartphone).