Error using spell checker in Basic Notes client

We have a number of 8.5.2 clients that we have elected to run in “Basic” mode (using the “UseBasicNotes=1” NOTES.INI parameter).

As soon as the client is started in Basic mode however, the Notes spell checker is rendered useless. The following message is contantly displayed whenever the spell checked is invoked:

Error during main dictionary spell initialization

The users have to disable the spell checker.

We are using an Australian dictionary file.

I understand that the spell checker has changed in the more recent versions of the Notes client, and have tried using a NOTES.INI parameter to reveret to the original method of checking (didn’t work).

We have tried removing all of the “SPELL_*” NOTES.INI parameters and re-setting everything up (didn’t work).

We have tried repointing the OS “Temp” & “Tmp” environment variables to shorter paths as documented in other posts (didn’t work).

The spell checker works quite happily when the Notes client is operated in “Standard” mode. As soon as anyone uses “Basic” mode however, we receive the error above.

Can anyone suggest a suitable workaround so that our Basic clients can use the spell checker with an Australian dictionary (yes, we have the aus.dic file)?

Cheers!

T.

Subject: Is the Australian dictionary even supported by the old spell check engine anymore?

This wiki article would suggest not!!

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/spelling-language-dictionaries-in-lotus-notes-8.5.1

Why would that be?!

Subject: Disk space

Just FYI for anyone else who has the “main dictionary spell initialization” error – one of my users got this error. Spellcheck worked fine for her the day before and today she got this error. As I was trying to troubleshoot, I noticed that she was low on disk space.

As soon as we deleted some files in the Temp directory and freed up a few MBs, the error disappeared and her spellcheck worked normally again. Apparently, the initialization takes a little disk space to execute.

Subject: Resolved…

I was finally able to locate the most recent dictionary files on the IBM site.

Once I used the new aus.dic file, and used the NOTES.INI parameter - “SPELL_FORCE_LEGACY=1”, everything started to work again.

Sweeeeeet!