1475284 - Firefox >=62.0 ignores system-wide dictionaries installed to $FIREFOX_DIR/dictionaries

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0
Build ID: 20180621064021

Steps to reproduce:

I've always stored my preferred additional dictionaries in $FIREFOX_DIR/dictionaries and they have worked just fine until recently. Meanwhile Firefox 62.0b7 totally ignores this directory and I've verified that using strace:

$ strace -e file -fF firefox 2>&1 | grep /opt/firefox/dictionaries
[No output]

If dictionaries' location or storage format has changed, please reflect that in Firefox 62 beta release notes and also please let me know how to have system-wide dictionaries installed in Firefox 62.

Comment 1

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I've just noticed that US English spelling dictionaries are gone from this directory, so this change is intentional yet hasn't been articulated.

Comment 2

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Also, while we're at it, Google doesn't find anything relevant for this query:

https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+62+system-wide+add-ons

All it finds is https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/02/22/removing-support-unpacked-extensions/ which doesn't provide any information or steps on how to install/enable system-wide add-ons, specifically dictionaries.

Comment 3

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

When you have dozens of users on the same PC it becomes extremely tedious and labarous to install the same set of dictionaries for each user.

Comment 4

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I do understand that in Firefox 62 you've ceased support for unpacked add-ons but you don't mention anywhere that it affects dictionaries as well, and you don't provide any solutions to this use case.

Comment 5

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

The documentation is pretty awful and totally unreadable for 99% of users out there: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Alternative_distribution_options

Comment 6

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Certain dictionaries are impossible to find on AMO and this was the only way to use/install them.

Please reconsider your decision.

Comment 7

[David Durst [:ddurst]]

Let's see if we can reproduce this on our side, so we can tell if there's an issue with unpacked or just an opinion on dictionaries from the 61 change.

Comment 8

[Vlad Jiman]

I've attempted to use the above strace on 59, 61, 62 and Nightly but to no succes, I would appreciate some more info to completely validate this, on the other hand I did notice the dictionaries folder is indeed not present or required on Nightly and 62 but it is present in 61.

Thanks!

Comment 9

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

(In reply to Vlad Jiman from comment #8)
> I've attempted to use the above strace on 59, 61, 62 and Nightly but to no
> succes, I would appreciate some more info to completely validate this, on
> the other hand I did notice the dictionaries folder is indeed not present or
> required on Nightly and 62 but it is present in 61.
> 
> Thanks!

I don't know what you're talking about.

I've got some dictionaries which are not published at AMO at FIREFOX_INSTALL_FOLDER/dictionaries and Firefox neither uses, nor shows them as available if you right click any text field and choose a "Languages" sub-menu.

If you have troubles reproducing this bug report, download any dictionary XPI from AMO, unpack the *.aff and *.dic files into  the FIREFOX_INSTALL_FOLDER/dictionaries directory and try to use it: Firefox will not allow you to do that.

Comment 10

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Modifying the contents of the Firefox install directory to customize it is not something that we support, so changes to the layout there don't get release notes.
Multiple things changed in 62, including bug 1457321 and bug 1457072.

Comment 11

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

(In reply to Andrew Swan [:aswan] from comment #10)
> Modifying the contents of the Firefox install directory to customize it is
> not something that we support, so changes to the layout there don't get
> release notes.
> Multiple things changed in 62, including bug 1457321 and bug 1457072.

System wide dictionaries were available and used by countless people long before Mozilla became Firefox, i.e. for more than 15 years.

I'd love this bug report to remain open until you provide a solution to the issue.

Spelling dictionaries are not something which can be used to break the browser or run any malicious code in it - it's a huge usability issue. Again, there are _multiple_ dictionaries which you can't download from AMO, yet you could perfectly use them before Firefox 62 for all users in the system.

Creating crazy band-aid workarounds for the issue doesn't seem right: yes, one can copy dictionaries into the user profile directory but it's far from straightforward (are there any readily available scripts for Windows/Linux/MacOS? No?) and also it wastes disk space.

Comment 12

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

There are supported ways of installing dictionaries. Creating and installing extensions is the primary one. Placing files in the Firefox installation directory is not, however, among them.

Comment 13

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

(In reply to Kris Maglione [:kmag] from comment #12)
> There are supported ways of installing dictionaries. Creating and installing
> extensions is the primary one. 

And wasting time publishing them on AMO? What about less tech-savvy users? What about those who don't want to publish their dictionaries for their own private reasons?

> Placing files in the Firefox installation directory is not, however, among them.

This has been available and worked for over 15 years. I want to understand why this method has been removed without providing any easy alternatives.

Comment 14

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

(In reply to Artem S. Tashkinov from comment #13)
> (In reply to Kris Maglione [:kmag] from comment #12)
> > There are supported ways of installing dictionaries. Creating and installing
> > extensions is the primary one. 
> 
> And wasting time publishing them on AMO? What about less tech-savvy users?
> What about those who don't want to publish their dictionaries for their own
> private reasons?

Who said anything about signing?  You can install unsigned dictionaries, they just have to be packaged as xpis and placed in a supported location.  "less tech-savvy users" should certainly not be modifying the contents of the Firefox install directory.

> > Placing files in the Firefox installation directory is not, however, among them.
> 
> This has been available and worked for over 15 years. I want to understand
> why this method has been removed without providing any easy alternatives.

Again, the layout of the Firefox installation directory is an implementation detail.  You can read the bugs I cited above if you're curious about the reasoning.

Please stop re-opening this bug, we've explained (several times now) the situation and you're now wasting everybody's time.