We are running v6.11, and find the spell checker is very slow indeed. I am told this is a 'known issue', and if so, could I please request a hike in the performance? The DBTextworks spell checker does seem to be INCREDIBLY slow in comparison with (for example) MS Word, even though our Custom dictionary only has about 1200 entries.

I have added your name to the request to improve spell check performance; you are the 6th user. I am not aware of any "very slow indeed...known issue." Some comments:

I normally use "Check spelling as you type" and find it much faster than manually choosing Tools>Spell Check.

The main slowness in on-demand Spell Check seems to be the accuracy of the suggestions. Have you tried setting your Suggestion level to "Fast but less accurate"? (Select a misspelled word, choose Spell Check, click the Options button.)

If you don't see a significant performance improvement from that, you can copy the spell check dictionaries locally and modify the following registry key to point to the new location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Inmagic\Wintertree\SSCE\MainLexPath

I'm assuming your "custom dictionary" is your "user dictionary". I imagine having 1200 entries in that could cause a noticeable performance hit, especially if any of them overlap terms in the normal dictionaries. And if your user dictionary is on a network drive rather than local, that would make it even slower.

Note that there is a Medical dictionary available, and the main dictionaries are probably more efficient than a user dictionary.

Thanks Lisa

I'll have a look at the effect of changing some of the spellchecker options - to see if I can bring about a significant improvement in speed for an acceptable reduction of accuracy. I don't think network access to the dictionary SHOULD be an issue here, but it IS necessary to keep it on the server to ensure consistency across all users. I presume that there is no way in which it is possible to edit & compile the main English dictionary file - as this would be the ideal (if main dictionaries ARE faster) - we use a lot of Latin Species names and technical terms that are of 'minority interest' and so not catered for by (for example) a medical dictionary. Incidentally, this would be a very useful way to ensure that we don't end up with both American AND English spellings for the same word being accepted!

Did you uncheck all the American English options when selecting Spell Check dictionaries, and retain only British English?

Yes....But there seems to be a bit of a difference of opinion regarding just what constitutes American or English spellings of some words!