wordcraft/docs/spelling-dictionaries.md

Installing spelling dictionaries

Last reviewed: 2026-10-16 · Last updated: 2026-10-22 · Change: minor (Spanish: es_ES, es_MX, es_419 and es_UY with their fallbacks, #3360, #3553; previously trivial: ISO 8859-1 dictionaries are read, #2824; previously major: first version)

English spelling works out of the box. Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Czech, Italian, Croatian, Turkish, Indonesian and Spanish spelling use a standard Hunspell dictionary (an .aff and a .dic file) that WordCraft reads at runtime. These dictionaries are not bundled: they are large, and several are GPL or LGPL licensed. Without one, the language isn't checked. The status bar then shows the language with (no dictionary), for example Português (Brasil) (no dictionary).

If a dictionary is installed but can't be read (an unsupported SET encoding, a file over the size limit, a parse error), the language isn't checked either, and the status bar shows (dictionary unreadable) instead. Its tooltip gives the .dic file and the reason, and File › Options › Proofing lists the same reason next to the file.

Install a dictionary once, restart WordCraft, and the language is checked as you type.

Which files each language needs

WordCraft looks for the first of these file names (each name means a <name>.aff and <name>.dic pair in the same folder):

Language	File names	Common source
Polish	pl_PL, pl-PL, pl	SJP.PL
Russian	ru_RU, ru-RU, ru	LibreOffice dict-ru
Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal)	pt_BR, pt-BR, pt	VERO (LibreOffice dict-pt-BR)
Czech	cs_CZ, cs-CZ, cs	LibreOffice dict-cs
Italian	it_IT, it_CH, it-IT, it	LibreOffice dict-it
Croatian	hr_HR, hr-HR, hr	LibreOffice dict-hr
Turkish	tr_TR, tr-TR, tr	LibreOffice dict-tr
Spanish (Spain)	es_ES, es-ES, es_ANY, es	LibreOffice dict-es (RLA-ES)
Spanish (Mexico)	es_MX, es-MX, es_419, es-419, es_ANY, es	LibreOffice dict-es (RLA-ES)
Spanish (Latin America, and the other Spanish regions of the Americas)	es_419, es-419, es_ANY, es, es_US, es_MX, es_AR, es-AR	LibreOffice dict-es (RLA-ES)
Spanish (Uruguay)	es_UY, es-UY, es_AR, es-AR, es_419, es-419, es_ANY, es	LibreOffice dict-es (RLA-ES)

Every Portuguese region uses the same pt_BR dictionary, so text marked Português (Portugal) is checked with it too.

Spanish has a dictionary per variety: text marked Español (España) uses es_ES, Español (México) es_MX, Español (Uruguay) es_UY, and Español (Latinoamérica) and the other Spanish regions of the Americas (Argentina, Colombia, the United States…) the first Latin American one found. LibreOffice's dict-es has them all. Uruguayan Spanish also accepts the vos forms of the dictionary's verbs (tenés, vení, decime, decímelo).

The files may be UTF-8 or the encoding named on the .aff's SET line (ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-2, KOI8-R and Windows-1251 are read as well; the original VERO pt_BR is ISO 8859-1).

Where WordCraft looks

The first folder holding a matching pair wins:

1. The folder set in File › Options › Proofing › Dictionaries folder. This is the easiest way on every system, and it works for an app started from the Start menu, Finder or the Dock. The same pane lists the dictionary file each language found.
2. The folder in the WORDCRAFT_DICTIONARIES environment variable.
3. The system's usual places:

System	Folders
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\WordCraft\dictionaries, %LOCALAPPDATA%\hunspell, %APPDATA%\WordCraft\dictionaries, %APPDATA%\hunspell, LibreOffice's share\extensions\dict-* under Program Files (on any drive)
macOS	~/Library/Spelling, /Library/Spelling, /opt/homebrew/share/hunspell, /usr/local/share/hunspell, /Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/dict-*
Linux and BSD	~/.local/share/hunspell, /usr/share/hunspell, /usr/share/myspell, /usr/share/myspell/dicts, /usr/local/share/hunspell, /usr/local/share/myspell, LibreOffice's share/extensions/dict-* under /usr/lib/libreoffice or /opt/libreoffice

The web version can't read these folders, so these languages aren't spell-checked there.

Example: Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)

VERO, the Brazilian Portuguese dictionary LibreOffice ships, is available from the LibreOffice dictionaries repository (LGPLv3 / MPL). Any of these ways works.

If LibreOffice is installed

Nothing to do: WordCraft finds LibreOffice's dict-pt-BR extension on its own. Restart WordCraft after installing LibreOffice.

Windows

In PowerShell:

$d = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\WordCraft\dictionaries"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force $d | Out-Null
$base = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/master/pt_BR"
Invoke-WebRequest "$base/pt_BR.aff" -OutFile "$d\pt_BR.aff" -UseBasicParsing
Invoke-WebRequest "$base/pt_BR.dic" -OutFile "$d\pt_BR.dic" -UseBasicParsing

macOS

mkdir -p ~/Library/Spelling
cd ~/Library/Spelling
curl -fLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/master/pt_BR/pt_BR.aff
curl -fLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/master/pt_BR/pt_BR.dic

Linux

From the distribution's packages:

sudo apt install hunspell-pt-br   # Debian, Ubuntu

Or, without root, into your own folder:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/hunspell
cd ~/.local/share/hunspell
curl -fLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/master/pt_BR/pt_BR.aff
curl -fLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/master/pt_BR/pt_BR.dic

Other languages work the same way: replace pt_BR with the language's folder and file names from the LibreOffice repository (for example it_IT/it_IT.aff; the Spanish ones are all in es/, for example es/es_MX.aff).

Checking that it works

• Restart WordCraft. The status bar no longer says (no dictionary), and a misspelled word such as impramir is underlined, with imprimir among its suggestions.

• File › Options › Proofing lists the file each language found.

• From the command line:

  wordcraft-cli run --cmd 'text.insert={"text":"Vou impramir o documento."}' --cmd select.all --cmd 'review.language={"lang":"pt-BR"}' --cmd review.issues --print
  

  The review.issues line lists impramir as a spelling issue with its suggestions.

• The log file (%APPDATA%\WordCraft\logs\wordcraft.log on Windows) says Portuguese spelling: no Hunspell pt_BR dictionary installed when none was found.

Never commit dictionary files to this repository: they stay on the user's system.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-22	minor	Spanish (#3360, #3553): the file names for Spain, Mexico, Latin America and Uruguay and their fallbacks
2026-10-18	trivial	ISO 8859-1 (SET ISO8859-1) dictionaries are read, so the original VERO pt_BR works without converting it to UTF-8 (#2824)
2026-10-18	minor	An installed dictionary that can't be read shows (dictionary unreadable) in the status bar, with the file and reason in its tooltip and in File › Options › Proofing (#2830)
2026-10-16	major	First version: the file names per language, the search order and folders on Windows, macOS and Linux, installing pt_BR on each, and how to check it works