Jan

4

Get the spellchecker up on the rich text editor

Filed Under Ajax, ColdFusion | 13 Comments


[Update] : If you are on ColdFusion 8.0.1, then refer my recent post

I recently got in touch with Frederico and Wiktor Walc from the FCKeditor team to get the spellchecker working with a cfm server script. There were a couple of issues which now have been resolved. Thanks to Frederico and Wiktor Walc! It is now possible to get the spellchecker working with ColdFusion 8 rich text editor. Here’s how you can go about enabling it. However I got it to work only on windows. One of my team mates was not able to get it properly working on other Operating Systems. Do try it out and let me know.

Step 1: Set the configuration properties for spellchecker

FCKeditor supports integration with ieSpell and SpellerPages as the two spellchecker utilities.

ieSpell works as a plugin only on Internet Explorer. So SpellerPages is the way to go. The following properties have to be set for SpellerPages to work in the fckconfig.js file under /CFIDE/scripts/ajax/FCKeditor/ directory.

Set SpellerPages as the spellchecker

FCKConfig.SpellChecker = ‘SpellerPages‘ ; // ‘ieSpell’ | ‘SpellerPages’

Set spellchecker.cfm to be the Server Script SpellerPages

FCKConfig.SpellerPagesServerScript = ’server-scripts/spellchecker.cfm‘;

Step 2: Copy the corrected version of spellchecker.cfm

Get spellchecker.cfm here.

Copy spellchecker.cfm into /CFIDE/scripts/ajax/FCKeditor/editor/dialog/fck_spellerpages/spellerpages/server-scripts/ directory.

Step 3: Install aspell and the required dictionary

Download and install Aspell on the server from http://www.aspell.net. The windows version can be found at http://www.aspell.net/win32 Aspell-0-50-3-3-Setup.exe. Ideally, install in the default location C:\Program Files\Aspell\. If not installed under the default location, the right location has to be set in spellchecker.cfm.

Install english dictionary (aspell-en-0.50-2-3.exe) or the required dictionary in default location (Important: if you don’t install dictionary, Aspell will not find misspelled words!). If the language is other than English, then the language has to be set in spellchecker.cfm.

Once done, the spellchecker is ready for use. Click on the spellcheck icon in the menu to open the spellchecker in the rich text editor.

Comments

13 Responses to “Get the spellchecker up on the rich text editor”

  1. Tom Mollerus on January 8th, 2008 10:28 am

    If using one of the FOSS spellcheckers isn’t an option, you can integrate Foundeo’s Spell Checker with FCKEditor. While you do need to pay for it, Foundeo’s product is nice because the dictionary is a cross-platform .jar file.

  2. Rakshith on January 8th, 2008 9:44 pm

    @Tom – Thanks for the info. We will surely take a look at this one.

  3. Jake Munson on February 12th, 2008 9:49 am

    Thanks Rakshith, this walk through was just what I needed. :)

  4. Rakshith on February 12th, 2008 2:31 pm

    Am glad it was of help Jake.

  5. Bim Paras on July 10th, 2008 2:47 pm

    Do you know if the ASpell and dictionary installation works on a Windows Server 2003 64 bit edition?

  6. Rakshith on July 12th, 2008 4:04 am

    hmm.. Not sure about this one Bim. Are you facing any issue there?

  7. Ron Gruner on October 17th, 2008 8:10 pm

    Bingo! After fooling around for hours trying to get Spell Check to work with CF8 Rich Text Editor your directions had the app running in ten minutes. Many thanks.

  8. Rakshith on October 20th, 2008 3:28 am

    Thanks Ron. Am glad the post helped you out.

  9. Vince on February 24th, 2009 3:19 pm

    I cannot get ASpell to work in a clustered CF environment. I have it installed in the default location on a windows 2003 server and I keep getting an error that it wants to look for the ‘cmd.exe’ in C:\windows\systems32\ when it is actually in C:\winnt\systems32\. I have explicitly coded ‘C:\winnt\systems32\cmd.exe’ but it still wants to look for it in a ‘windows’ directory. Help.

  10. Rakshith on June 29th, 2009 1:18 am

    @ Vince: Hmm.. This is strange. It could be an issue with the editor.

  11. Sean Sekora on July 24th, 2009 7:13 am

    Thanks for the guide. I was able to getting it working on a Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition with one change. Aspell installed to the
    C:\Program Files (x86) by default so I had to make a change to the spellchecker.cfm template.

    Changed
    ——-

    To
    ——-

    After that everything worked great

  12. Sean Sekora on July 24th, 2009 7:15 am

    It looks like the code isn’t displaying so here is another attempt

    Changed
    ——-
    <cfset aspell_dir = "C:\Program Files\Aspell\bin">

    To
    ——-
    <cfset aspell_dir = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Aspell\bin">

  13. Rakshith on July 26th, 2009 10:54 pm

    @sean : Am glad it worked for you on Windows Server 2003. Thanks for sharing the information

Leave a Reply