Everyone understands “tablespoon,” but some people prefer to abbreviate it “Tbl” and others “T.” If they were all different in meaning, you might want to make them all distinct Terms in Mangia!’s Dictionary. But since they all really do refer to the same thing, it’s better to make two of them “stand for” the third. How? We make them Alternative Spellings.
There are two ways to add Alternative Spellings to the Dictionary. First, you can just use the spelling as if it were already there. When the Spelling Checker objects, you could then provide the “real” Term and check the box that says Remember Correction. Mangia! will henceforth take the new spelling as just another form of the correct Term.
The more laborious, but easier to understand, alternative is to use the Edit Dictionary... menu (under Edit) to call up the term in question. If the resulting window shows a text box labelled Alternative Spellings, you can simply add as many alternatives as you like (separated by commas).
What’s special about the standard spelling (i.e., “tablespoon” in the example above) versus the alternatives? The standard spelling is what Mangia! uses to express the Term. That is, you can type “2 T.”, but Mangia! will always show “2 tablespoons” when the recipe is displayed or printed. Don’t like that either? Well, that’s what Edit Dictionary... is for!
Alternative Spellings need not be confined to preferences; you can make Mangia! comfortable with any alternatives you like, whether they’re ways you often mis-spell the original, or just different, better forms. Having once been told how to get from an alternative back to the form it understands, Mangia! will happily recall it upon demand.
