261930 - Manually fixing spelling in spellcheck causes off-by-N error and flags next word incorrectly

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Steven Kalemkiewicz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040918 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.8

Manually fixing a word in the spell-checker with a length greater than the
original misspelled word causes the spell-checker to incorrectly identify the
start of the next word.  This causes the spell-checker to incorrectly flag words
as misspelled and skip words completely in some cases.

This does not hold when manually replacing misspelled words with ones shorter or
equal to the original.  Nor does this occur when words are chosen from the
suggested replacements.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Case 1 (Simple Replacement)
1.1. In a new message, type the string "flowre somebody".
1.2. Run spell-check.  It will flag "flowre" and offer replacements.
1.3. Manually enter "kangaroos" and replace.
1.4. The checker will flag the word "mebody".

Case 2 (Simple Replacement w/ Extra Spaces)
2.1. In a new message, type the string "flowre somebody".
2.2. Run spell-check.  It will flag "flowre" and offer replacements.
2.3. Manually enter "kangaroos" and replace.
2.4. The checker will flag the word "omebody".

Case 3 (Word Skipping)
3.1. In a new message, type the string "adn of someone".
3.2. Run spell-check.  It will flag "adn" and offer replacements.
3.3. Manually enter "kangaroos" and replace.
3.4. The checker will flag the word "meone".
3.5. Repeat steps 3.1-3.4 with the string "adn fo someone" and observe the results.

Actual Results:  
Given is each case and where the next word is identified (indicated by '|').

kangaroos somebody
flowre so|mebody        

kangaroos  somebody
flowre  s|omebody

adn fo someone
kangaroos fo so|meone

adn of someone
kangaroos fo so|meone

Expected Results:  
The spell-checker 'find' the next word correctly (not it's substring) and not
skip any misspelled words because of this off-by-N error.

This is not a complete idea of how this works in the general case (especially w/
skipping words), but it shows how extra spaces between the words affects the
results.  

Let W1 be a misspelled word of lenth w1
Let W2 be a correctly spelled word that follows W1
Let W3 be a correctly spelled word of lenth w1+x that replaces W1
Let s be the number of spaces between W1 and W2

The spellchecker thinks that the next word starts W2[w1+x-s] instead of W2[0]

Comment 1

[mozilla]

I can confirm this bug in Thunderbird 1.0 on Windows 2000.  It also occurs when
the spell-checker automatically suggests a longer word than the misspelt one.

Example:
Create a new email containing the text "eg dingo", and spell check
Spell check suggests replacing "eg" with "e.g.", then press the replace button
Spell check reports the word "ingo" as misspelt.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 250492 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Steven Kalemkiewicz]

I retested this with Thundervird 1.0.6 (on Linux) and found that this bug still
occurs.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

but did you try it with thunderbird 1.5 beta 2?

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta2.html

Comment 6

[Steven Kalemkiewicz]

(In reply to comment #5)
> but did you try it with thunderbird 1.5 beta 2?

No, good suggestion.  While using Thunderbird 1.5 beta 2 on Windows:

Invoking the spellchecker from the menu produces the same results.  

Comment 7

[Ray Booysen]

*** Bug 313017 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Ronald Killmer]

I continue to see this bug with Tb 2.0.0.6 release on Windows ME

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Ronald, can  you test a trunk build?  Pick custom install and specify a directory so it doesn't wipe out your Thunderbird v2 install http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/

note: reporter's email address is dead

Comment 10

[Németh László]

Bug 409528 also reports this problem.

Comment 11

[Ronald Killmer]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Ronald, can  you test a trunk build?  Pick custom install and specify a
> directory so it doesn't wipe out your Thunderbird v2 install
> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
> 

Could not test a trunk build as they no longer support Windows 9x.  My Win ME system is now burned toast and I migrated to Vista and hate the new OS.

An observation, spell-as-you-type worked better than Check-on-send, which exhibited this bug when Win ME box was running. However, with the pending switch of spell check engines this bug might be moot if it's behavior is driven MySpell.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

using trunk 2008011304 comment 0 no longer happens exactly as described.  It no longer suggests an incorrect replacement, but caret position is still off.  STM this is an editor problem described in bug 223416 comment 3 and not spell check.

same as older suite bug 223416, and newer bug 335809. OS=ALL

Comment 13

[buovjaga]

Don't see any problem with caret position. Closing.

Thunderbird 45.8.0
Windows 7 64-bit