Problem Creating SeaMonkey Profile in a Partition

I would be very interested to see if your file works now. I did the same thing, and it didn't work?

 

Ramona: It doesn't. Ppffffttttttt.

To make things simpler, I sent a shortcut of the persdict.dat file to my Desktop, enabling me to open it with Notepad easily to check its contents and I found the terms I'd added from the custom. dic file were listed there. Then I opened a Compose message and tried a few test words. Oddly, some worked but most didn't. Then I typed some words that I'd already added to the persdict.dat file (using the method described in my previous post), and most weren't accepted. So the file merge doesn't seem to work.

I notice that the few words that had already been added to the file via the Add to Dictionary procedure were all on one line with a small rectangle between each one rather than appearing in list form as my NS custom.dic file has them. Is that because it's a *.dat file? And is that a clue as to whether a list of words can be added, or does it suggest a method by which it could be done? I know absolutely nothing about writing code.

 

BOBBO,

Use WordPad to view your dictionary files. Notepad will show the text as you describe, but WordPad will show the text in list format.

I still haven't been able to find anything about how to get the custom.dic file into SeaMonkey. I'm still working on it though!

 

Ramona: I just finished going through a process that might work. I had the idea this morning. The only way to get anything into the persdict.dat file seemed to be to compose an e-mail and whenever a spelling would trigger the spellchecker, click on Add to Dictionary. So I sent a shortcut of my NS custom.dic file to my Desktop for easy repeated access, opened it, and highlighted the first 20 items and clicked on Ctrl+C. Opened a new e-mail Compose message and pasted those 20 items into it. Some of the items tripped the SeaMonkey spellchecker, so I clicked on Add to Dictionary for each of them. Deleted that batch from the e-mail message so the spellchecker wouldn't have to deal with the same batch all over again. Then went to another batch of words in custom.dic and did the same with them. Did that until I got to the end of the custom.dic list. Now all the items in it that SeaMonkey's dictionary doesn't recognize are in the persdict.dat file. Supposedly it will now function the same as Netscape's custom.dic did. It's a tedious procedure, but I had to go through it just the one time and I'll have to live with it awhile to see if it really works the way I expect. Until a way to merge the two files more easily and quickly comes up, that's the way I've found to get the final result. Your thoughts?

 

Bravo! That's probably the only way it can be done, because I've had interactiion going on newsgroups and forums, and no one seems to know how to copy/rename/migrate custom.dic to persdict.dat, other than what you're doing.

If anyone can tell me otherwise, I'll let you know...

 

I believe I just found an easier way. I read the thread that vegaspat opened regarding the T-Bird dictionary. Putting 2 and 2 together, I opened the NS custom.dic file, then opened persdict.dat in Wordpad, deleted the contents of it that I'd produced awhile ago today (in list form but terribly scrambled alphabetically), and then copied and pasted the already alphabetized contents of the NS custom.dic into the now empty Wordpad version of the persdict.dat file. And there it was, the contents of custom.dic in persdict.dat, in list form and in alphabetical order, easy to review and edit. Quick. Easy. I wish I'd known about that 3 days ago.

I tested it by going to Google|News and copying a couple of fairly long stories (300 to 500 words apiece) into a new Compose window. Clicked on Spell. Very few words needed attention, all people's names. So the procedure seems to work.

 

Did you try purposely misspelling words that you knew were in the persdict.dat file? That would be the real test, as I had no problem in adding words, but when I tried misspelling some medical terminology I purposely added for this reason, I got no results...

 

Ramona: Good idea. Right now I'm away from home and my desktop computer with SeaMonkey on it. I'm using my wife's laptop which still has Netscape 7.1 on it and not SeaMonkey, so I probably won't be able to try the test until late Tuesday of next week.

Since your test failed, any idea why?

 

Ramona: Now that I'm back home, I've run some tests of the persdict.dat and gotten mixed results. If I type into a new message some strange words or names that are already in the file, they don't get flagged. That's good. If I deliberately misspell them, though, they get flagged but the correct spelling isn't suggested. That's not so good. And changing capitalization of those unusual names seems to stupefy it.

Punctuation seems to confuse it -- it doesn't see anything wrong with "don;t" for instance. And "Thou9gh" doesn't get flagged, either. Are those just limitations to SeaMonkey, or is something still in need of fixing?

When I open the persdict.dat file with Wordpad, the file opens but the words are scrambled, not in alphabetical order anymore. If I should ever have to edit the file, the order of the entries would make the job a lot easier. Is there any way to run a Sort? So far I haven't found any.

Does any of that suggest anything?

 

BOBBO,

I've been working with a friend on the persdict.dat file, and what you have found seems to be the nature of the beast. We both had the same experience as yours.

I alphabetized my persdict.dat file by copying the list to WordPerfect, doing a sort, then removing the existing list in persdict.dat and replacing them with the sorted list.

 

Ramona: I followed your suggestion but used MS Word to sort the terms alphabetically, and it seems to have done the job. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

I guess my switch from Netscape 7.1 to SeaMonkey is complete now. Thanks for all the help, and it was a lot.

 

Always a pleasure, BOBBO!