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I wish that words I enter into the spell checker would last. The next day after closing and restarting AC I have to re-enter them again.
Could we also get a better medical dictionary for the spell check that recognized common medical terminology?

Greg Phillips

Greg,

The words should last. The words you save are saved to the Amazing Charts folder on the PC you are using and not to the server, which I don't understand at all. The file is called userdic.tlx. It leaves a lot to be desired.

I agree with the latter. I use Stedman's which is quite pricey, but of course it can only be used with Office and not other programs.

I did fix the problem of saving words.
My mistake was not recognizing that each PC had a separate dictionary rather than a single unified dictionary on the server.
When I would back up the server to my PC I would overwrite the dictionary and my words would disappear :^(

Greg

Or, could we use the wiki in such a way that common medical terminology added by AC doctors could be added to the dictionary. It could generate a dictionary file that could be loaded from the server. Assuming of course it would cost anything to get a dictionary yall would be happy with.

This would have to be easy though. I have an idea that would make it passive for yall though.

Oh, and it might not come from the server because it would add a couple more seconds to start AC up. But that could probably be worked around.

Ben,

You completely lost me. Where would we get this dictionary file from? The users would add words? What is passive mean in this context.

Why would it take more time to start up AC? Why would you put it on the server?

Sounds like a good idea, but I think I am missing something.

Greg,

It makes no sense at all to put the file on each individual computer.

I might be wrong about it taking longer to load AC. I was thinking the userdic.tlx file would be downloaded from the server upon each log-in. But, there is probably a better way so I think I am mistaken.

My thought is that there could be a wiki page that could be parsed into a userdic.clx file, it seems to just be text, and the users who have moderator access could edit it. Then people could update their dictionary by downloading the file and replacing there usersdic.clx file on the server.

Those using AC backup could also have their user dictionary uploaded, it's only a few k, and their userdic.cls could be checked for new words not in the master. Thus the dictionary would quickly grow to having the medical terminology used by most of you. Of course someone might be tempted to check in some Lewis Carrol or Dr. Seuss...

That's the idea, though it would be easiest to just take the longest running practices dictionary files, combine them and replace the standard file with it.

Benjamin,

Thanks for clarifying. Do you mean a .tlx file rather than a .clx file?

Your idea is not a bad one. There may be a few logistical problems. I just wonder how many people would take the time to add their words to the Wiki.

I always buy the Stedman's Medical Dictionary on CD every year or so. I add it to Word and Outlook, etc. Works great. Only problem: Rather pricey and the licensing. There are just some programs which should be allowed to run on multiple PCs, ummm... like AC does.

The key would be to find a list somewhere on the Internet (seems like it must exist) and add them in one fell swoop into a .tlx file. Then, the only other problem I see is how to put the "i" into the file. It's probably easy to do with a script or whatever. I don't know, because I am embarrased to say I don't remember what they are for. They must be like a 0 or 1 as to correct or incorrect or something like that.

Try this link:

http://www.e-medtools.com/openmedspel.html

they have an free license to use the text of their medical dictionary. The accuracy should be good.

However I tried to manually add the dictionary to the .tlx file but then the file would not load in the AC (ie I could not pull the user dictionary) spell checker. I tried multiple techniques to place the file at certain points in the text file. Any manual editing of the file outside of the AC program renders it unusable. Either I have made a mistake in the manual editing or the spellchecker application (which is a separately licensed app by AC as I understand it) does not allow manual editing of this file.

At least you can add it to openoffice or firefox.

Geoff

In checking out the userdic.tlx document, when the words are added there there is a tab then i added after the word.

Currently I am working on a computer with open office, but I seem to remember that word could replace a paragraph sign with tab i paragraph, which would put this after every word. Then if the document could be saved again (as a tlx document) it might work.

If that doesn't work (and I probably won't have a chance to try it out until the weekend) perhaps we could elevate this to the AC central and see if they could get it added to the main dictionary in a future release. They would probably need sign offs from both the source of words and the sublicensed dictionary, but this should not be that difficult.

I do like the idea of having one central repository of words, not local computer separate.

I completely agree. And, I would be interested in anything you come up with.

One minor annoyance with the AC spell checker that I deal with on a daily basis is that it does not like mixed case words. It seems to constantly flag common words like LabCorp or TriCor. Despite adding these words to the dictionary repeatedly, it keeps flagging the same words again and again.

It simply needs to be redone.

I had simply placed the file into an excel sheet, add the i in the second column and then exported as a tab delimited file.

I then placed the contents in the file but the file would not load into AC after any manual adjustment. I only spent twenty minutes on this issue, there must be another way that this has to be done.

Since the openmedspell is distributed under the GPL you can manually add the dictionary to your AC installation and use it internally. GPL applies in redistribution of the text source. Any derivative works would have to be released back to the open community if you redistribute the file. Of course an open wiki or publicly edited file would just have to made available to the public at large. My thoughts would be to have the GPL file available to download and a separate community developed file that can be merged by the end users into their dictionary. I am not a GPL lawyer though, use this advice at your own risk.

We really need a better spell checker, bad. If I misspell on a written form or note, no problem and nobody notices (probably a function of poor penmanship). I misspell on a typed note or generated AC note I am flogged and beaten for it.

Geoff