How are forbidden words defined / chosen?

[svenlowrybjss]

I've had a few words get flagged by Code Spell Checker as "forbidden" and was wondering why these specific words would get flagged, where they get defined as forbidden and who decides they're forbidden? They're words that are very common in software development, so it seems very odd that they're forbidden.

Examples that I've seen recently are transform and bootstrap

[Jason3S]

The spell checker has a trace mode. If you bring up commands and type spell toggle trace, the command should show up. When trace mode is enabled, hovering over a word will show which dictionaries have flagged it.

[svenlowrybjss]

That shows:

and then I've looked at those dictionaries in https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Astreetsidesoftware%2Fcspell-dicts%20bootstrap&type=code and as far as I can tell they're listing bootstrap as a valid term, not forbidden?

Although no idea if that's the right place to look!

[Jason3S]

Hmmm. Looks like I need to improve the report to show which ones forbid it. I'm guessing the Dutch dictionary.

If I use the cspell command line tool, it tells me that it is the Dutch dictionary.

See the discussion in #4042

[svenlowrybjss]

Thanks, that's useful to see.
Still seems odd that it's there as a forbidden word!

[Jason3S]

I think the Dutch dictionary writers marked certain compound words as forbidden because they are not "valid" Dutch words. See: Reconsider usage of /Fw in wordlist.txt · Issue #14 · OpenTaal/opentaal-wordlist. I don't think they are considering what should happen when there are other dictionaries enabled as well.

[svenlowrybjss]

Ah yeah, that sounds like it's the same thing I'm seeing.
Thanks a lot for the replies :)

[Jason3S]

#4042 provides some possible workarounds.