I was recently asked a question by a fellow mapper about how to add a new dictionary in XMind 7.
I've personally never done this, so I did a little research and checked in with my contact over at XMind. I'll show you a way to do it in XMind 7, and I'll also drop some hints of what might be coming in the future.
XMind's suggested process
The current official instructions can be found over on XMind's helpdesk site.
Here's the excerpt:
How to add my own dictionary into XMind?
In XMind, the default spell checking uses English dictionary (.dict). If English is not your major language, you can add your own language dictionary into XMind with the following steps.
- Get your own dictionary (normally it will be .dict, .txt or .dic file),
- Change the file extension to .dict, if it's not,
- Launch XMind, open Preferences from Edit menu (it's under XMind menu on Mac OS X),
- Open Spelling page (Preferences — Spelling),
- Click Add button, select your .dict file and add into XMind,
- Click Apply button to save changes in XMind.
The page also provides a link to some dictionaries that have been shared by a user of XMind. You might find the language you're looking for here – http://www.winedt.org/dict.html . I visited the site and found that some of the languages have been updated recently, but others haven't been changed in several years, meaning that some newer terms won't be included in the dictionary.
Some people having issues
I understand that some people have been having issues with trying to add a new dictionary in XMind 7.
From one of the articles on XMind's helpdesk it look like some people are having challenges getting various dictionaries to work when they're not in the UTF-8 format. There are a few suggestions mentioned. I haven't tried either of them, and I'm not vouching for the conversion software mentioned as I know nothing about it.
This isn't my area of expertise, so I'm mostly adding this post as a starting point, rather than a definitive guide to action.
Something Important to keep in mind
XMind currently supports only one dictionary at a time.
That means that when you add a new dictionary to XMind 7 you will permanently delete the default English dictionary. That may not be a big deal to you, but I want to make sure you're aware of it before attempting to make changes to your installation.
Looking ahead to the future
And finally. I had a good email conversation with the people over at XMind. My contact let me know that they're working on a dictionary fix for the next version of XMind. That means we'll likely see an update to this over the next few months.
In the meantime, keep mapping away.
