How to ignore specific words in one file?

[gperrow]

I am using vale for spell checking markdown files. I have a "global" ignore file, with words that should be ignored by the spell checker, but I would like to be able to tell vale that in this particular file, ignore the word "foo" in the spell check, but not in other files. I'm sure there's a way to use a comment within the file to do that but all I've found so far is <!-- vale off --> foo <!-- vale on --> which is ugly and inconvenient.

Is there a way to do this?

[ccoVeille]

Good question.

I don't think you can overload the vocabulary for one file via .vale.ini

You might be able to disable the whole spelling for this file with a vale.Spelling = No in .vale.ini, but it's not apparently what you are looking for.

[ccoVeille]

Could you explain the context?

I mean it's about allowing words that are somehow invalid everywhere, except this file.

But you somehow want to use all other vale rules on this file

Except a file that would contain a list of invalid words, such as in spell checker dictionary, I don't see the need.

But then, I wouldn't expect to run vale on the file.

Last questions:

• how many words do you have that you want to ignore in one file?
• how dramatic would it be to add them in the vocabulary used by Vale

You might have understand where I'm leading you.

You have asked "how can I do X?"
I ask you "why do you need X?"
And now, I'm trying to see if you can do without X.

[gperrow]

I want to do spell checking on a bunch of design documents for programming projects. Say a document describes an API and includes parameter names throughout the document. In that case something like "objectname" or "hostid" might appear throughout the text and in this file, I don't want those words to trigger a spell check failure.

If I add these words to the global ignore file, they will not cause a failure anywhere. But in other files that don't refer to that API, I might type "objectname" instead of "object name" and in that case, I want spell checking to fail.

There are already ways to use comments to disable specific rules in one file but not in the rest of the files. I'm just looking for a way to do the same thing to ignore specific words in one file but not others.

[ccoVeille]

thanks for explaining your need, it's clearer and make sense

[jdkato]

I would format the parameter names as inline code using whatever syntax your markup language supports. For example, in Markdown, "objectname" becomes objectname which is ignored by Vale.

[gperrow]

@jdkato That's a reasonable solution going forward, but I have a couple hundred existing and approved docs and I don't want to go through them all to make that change. But having said that, running spell check on these existing and approved docs is not of much value anyway, so maybe I'll just skip the old documents and that would solve the problem. Thanks

[ccoVeille]

I also found this way to disable vale

https://github.com/errata-ai/vale/blob/v3/testdata%2Ffixtures%2Fcomments%2Ftest.md

Something like vale Vale.Spelling = OFF might also help you maybe, but only if you have a block where the words are located

EDIT: I'm noticing it's the solution you talked about in your initial message 😅🤦‍♂️

[alecthegeek]

Can you add a section like this to your vale.ini file?

[myspecialfile.ext]

vale.Spelling = NO

BasedOnStiyles = MySpecial.Spelling, .... 

Would that work?

[ccoVeille]

Maybe, but I'm doubtful

But this has just been merged

#772

It might help, what do you think guys?

@gperrow @alecthegeek

[gperrow]

It seems like a reasonable feature though it doesn't help me. I don't want to turn spell checking off or adjust the rules for specific files, I want to add to the list of ignored words for a specific file.

[ccoVeille]

What about adding a dedicated package?
This package could add a vocabulary with the words you want to add for this file
Then you could enable a package for this file only.

But yes, it would require to update the file to add a ln inline comment, something you might disagree to do.

[gperrow]

I'm asking to be able to update the file to add an inline comment. All I want is to be able to add something like this to a file:

<!-- vale ignore foo -->

And then the word "foo" will be ignored in that file and in no other files. I have hundreds of files I want to spell check, and adding a separate rule or package or whatever for each one is possible but a huge pain.

[ccoVeille]

OK your need is clear to me now.

Your request seems very legitimate to me.

I think it's close to what @ak-1 coded with #772

I'll let @jdkato gives a feedback about this idea.