ustwonomore
First of all let me explain, I tracked Joi down with your questions, so the answer you see below is from her--not from me as I would not know where to begin
First of all, I'm assuming that you've verified that the incorrect entry is really in the spellchecker's main dictionary, not in the supplemental dictionary that each the work platform MT creates, since you can easily delete it from the supp. dictionary.
Spell check is the weakest link in the work platform, as it were. As long as you turn off the option for the spellchecker that tries breaking the word into 2 pieces first (I'll post the name of the spellcheck program itself and also the exact words of that option sometime soon when I'm actually in the work platform and can access the info), the software itself is well designed. The word lists are licensed from Spellex and, quite frankly, they suck, IMO. I've told Spellex this to their faces (so to speak) in an email exchange where I listed for them a bunch of the weirder suggested spelling corrections. Their defense is that things like "kreatinine" are valid in someplace not US, I think they said New Zealand for that particular word. So? We're not studying linguistics here, Spellex. We're doing US transcription in American English. Even if we were based in India, we would want to check our documents with a spellchecker that speaks American English.
Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to remove words from the Spellex dictionary. The work-around that I have developed is to enter the incorrect spelling listed in Spellex (in this case kreatinine) into the expander as the abbreviation (in the work platform, what goes into the box labeled "replace"; other people call t his a "short") and the correct spelling, creatinine, as the expansion (in the work platform, goes into the "With" box; others call this the "long" form). Thus: REPLACE kreatinine WITH creatinine. Make similar entries for all the other incorrect words that are in the Spellex spellchecker list.
I keep trying to suggest to the right people that SpeechMachines ditch the Spellex word lists. As I said, the spellchecker engine works fine, so if I were running things, I would license my word lists from Stedman's and get an immediate increase in quality of documents and MT satisfaction.
Yes, you can print your expander list. It involves messing with the user.aco file which is discussed elsewhere on this forum. When you find that post you'll be able to learn how to identify your user.aco file which contains your personal expander file and how to back it up. User.aco is quite an essential file for most MTs (understatement much? ); even though The Company is kind enough to upload it onto their system every time we finish working, all MTs should take personal responsibility for safeguarding their own data files. Back this report up regularly to a floppy disk, CD-RW (the computers the company leases come with a CD burner so that you can back up your data very easily), or a plug-in USB device.
I have a cute little 32 MB "thumb" drive that Microsoft gave me for contributing some content to their Office Online website (medical transcription service invoice forms, actually, and a description of my Windows XP filing system, which one can find elsewhere on this forum). It holds my the work platform and Instant Text expander files plus all my normals for all the accounts I work on (admittedly it's straining at the seams and will not stand for many more increases in my expanders).
Once you've been able to back it up successfully, you can mess with the file a bit, but please do read what that post says about my not taking responsibility for what anyone does with their the work platform files. If you don't understand much about computer files, leave it alone and ask someone who does know to help you.
The 1-888-DICTATE tech staff are very kind and helpful people. Tell them what you want to do and have them help you. If they say they don't know how to print the user.aco file or that it's impossible, here's the real answer:
To print the user.aco file you want to open it in Notepad, but you DO NOT want to save it again. Got that? Do not save the file once you've opened it without first changing the name and the local of the file. Desktop would be a good place to put it.
Right-click on user.aco file name. Choose "open with" from options and mouse over those words. Another menu will appear -- choose "notepad." A new window will pop up containing user.aco in notepad format, which you should be able to read. Do a "save as" and rename the file "my expander file" and save it to the Desktop.
Now you can open the file on your desktop and print from it the way you would print any Notepad document in Windows: Click File (menu will drop down) then click Print. If you've already set up a printer with your computer, just choose the appropriate options from the print menu and print it.
You can make changes and save "my expander file" to your desktop, but it won't chang what's in the expander itself. That can only be edited during a transcription session by clicking Ctrl-E. It may theoretically be possible to edit the user.aco file in notepad format and resave it as user.aco, thus changing the expander itself, but I will not recommend experimenting with that because the consequences could be devastating to the MT.
GrannyT for Joi
Cora Harvey Armstrong-
