Open Bug 450602 Opened 16 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Custom Dictionary load failure after editing persdict.dat and including characters outside ASCII range

Categories

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect)

defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: peterchamberlin, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

I combined my Word XP custom.dic into Firefox's persdict.dat and found that on the next clean load of Firefox all my custom words were ignored by the spellchecker. The reason turned out to be the inclusion of the exception "µTorrent". Removing this word sorted the problem. The µ is character 181 in Windows English (United Kingdom) codepage. The file persdic.dat is in ANSI codepage format with Windows line breaks.

Additionally, once my custom dictionary was loading I noticed that Firefox does not suggest spelling corrections considering words from it - for example right clicking on a lower-case local place name I've added.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create persdict.dat with text content "µTorrent", save as Windows ANSI (UK)
2. Close and reopen Firefox 3.0.1
3. Paste "µTorrent" into text box (such as Google search) with Check Spelling on
Actual Results:  
Custom dictionary ignored when performing in-line spell check.

Expected Results:  
Custom dictionary words not highlighted in spell checked input fields.
Custom dictionary words included as part of right-click suggested alternatives.
Sounds like a problem parsing the custom dictionary.

"Additionally" part is bug 338291.
Component: General → Spelling checker
Product: Firefox → Core
QA Contact: general → spelling-checker
Confirmed, this is also a problem in en-US. 

It does not matter whether the word is added at the beginning or end of the dictionary.

This does not affect words that are added through the "Add to Dictionary" function, and their ANSI encodings are different from words that are directly pasted into the dictionary.

Since the interface to custom dictionaries is so limited, many people will be tempted to edit them. The chance of corrupting them while doing so isn't small.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Summary: Custom Dictionary load failure → Custom Dictionary load failure after editing persdict.dat and including characters outside ASCII range
See Also: → 420817
Severity: normal → S3
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