Nisus Writer provides several options that let you control how it behaves depending on the language applied to your text. The most common example is the spelling dictionary: Nisus Writer can automatically use different spelling dictionaries for different parts of your document, based on the languages you've applied to those bits of text.
This topic describes those kinds of global language-sensitive options that affect all text marked in a language. In other words, changing the options described below will immediately change how Nisus Writer behaves in all your documents, anywhere a configured language is applied.
To change which languages are used in your document text, see our topic on how to write in other languages.
Language Preferences Pane
This pane controls all language-sensitive options:
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Language
Using the image swatch, you can drag or paste a custom icon to be displayed for the language. If the selected language is a custom language, you may also edit the language's name.
Based On
This option is only enabled for custom user-defined languages. Custom languages inherit some built-in behavior (like word boundary detection) from their "based on" language.
Spelling
Each language can utilize a different spelling dictionary, allowing Nisus Writer to automatically switch between those dictionaries whenever spell checking. Nisus Writer supports all OSX spelling dictionaries; you can download and install additional spelling dictionaries if you don't see one for your language.
QuickFix options are also language-sensitive, and you can click the "Go To QuickFix Preferences" button to view and change those settings.
Thesaurus
Currently Nisus Writer only provides an English Thesaurus, which you may turn on/off for each language.
Hyphenation
Nisus Writer comes with a variety of hyphenation dictionaries, from which you can choose. Remember that hyphenation will only occur in any documents where hyphenation has been enabled via the menu View > Hyphenation.
Secondary Font
This font is used as a fallback when the primary font applied to a bit of text does not contain those characters. For example, consider applying the Copperplate font to some Hebrew text. Because Copperplate cannot display Hebrew characters, Nisus Writer consults the secondary font to see if it can be used to display the characters instead.
Switch Font
Whenever you switch to a language, Nisus Writer can automatically switch the font as well. You may switch to either the secondary font or the font you were using when last working in the language. You can also checkmark the option to switch the font size.
Keyboard
Whenever you switch to a language, or select/click some text marked in a language, Nisus Writer can automatically synchronize the keyboard layout for you. You can choose to always switch to a particular keyboard, or switch to the keyboard you were using when last working in the language.
Please note that while switching the language can automatically adjust the keyboard layout, the reverse is not possible (ie: switching the keyboard layout cannot automatically change the language). For more, please read this description of the difference between the languages and keyboard layouts.