339574 - Spell checker can only be set to spell check one language at a time

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 69687

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect)

Description

[Oded Arbel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060526 BonEcho/2.0a3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060526 BonEcho/2.0a3

There is a problem if a user types in input in more then one language - only one language can be selected for spell checking.

If a user types input in one language, and later  (possibly in another site) in another language - then the user has to remember to manually switch the language of the spell checker.

The problem is compounded if a user types in data in multiple languages on the same form (or even on the same entry box) - for example writing technical documentation with English terms in non-English or even non-Latin languages: in this case the user has to manually change the spell checker several times while writing in order to provide coverage.

Currently the workaround I use is to have a dictionary which was built with both English and Hebrew words (the two languages I use most often), but this is hardly a solution as a new dictionary would have to be built for each combination used, and we haven't started to discuss using 3 languages at a time.

I think it would be best if the user can enable multiple dictionaries in the spell checker RMB menu, and then Firefox would check each in turn and only report on words that fail all dictionaries.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

see also bug 69687 (these seem to be usually dup'd to that though I'm not sure what that bug is actually about)

Comment 2

[Oded Arbel]

Bug #69687 seems to be about the mail component (regardless of being assigned to "core" - possibly because its very old and the last comment is older then Bon Echo), and doesn't relate to on-line spell checking. That ticket states that the multiple dictionaries issue is how to select the one being used, and suggests ways  to make it easier to select the correct dictionary (or even have it selected automatically).

This issue is more about being able to select multiple dictionaries to be active at the same time. I do agree with the above mentioned bug report that the dictionary selection UI in Thunderbird could use a little work - this has no correlation to the Firefox dictionary selection UI as it doesn't really exist (except as an RMB menu).

Comment 3

[Oded Arbel]

Quoting an email discussion on the Linux-IL mailing list:

> But note that this issue is far from being trivial:

> A different solution can be to simply let the user enable more than one
> spell-checker, and then run both of them (say, passing a word as correct
> if one of these spell-checkers said it was correct). This makes perfect
> sense for Hebrew+English, but might perhaps make less sense in other
> situations,

I'm not saying that by default all dictionaries should be used - instead
let the user "enable" more then one dictionary, where a word is
considered valid if it indeed succeeds at least one enabled dictionary -
which also works if you have only one enabled. This is, BTW, how I
assumed it work as the UI for the spell check dictionaries uses
checkboxes which to me means that more then one can be selected.

In the case of the german+english user, the user can enable german and
disable english if he's not typing english in a form (and he thinks he
gets false positives). Admittedly there is some loss of functionality
for that use case, but (a) I would argue that this loss is much more
limited then the loss of functionality for the hebrew+english case if
multiple dictionaries are not available, and (b) it can be countered
easily by a better UI for dictionary management - for example setting
spell checking profiles, and maybe even attaching them to sites.

Comment 4

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

It would increase the amount of typos I think.
If I type "wat" instead of "what" it is right in the Dutch language but not in the English language. And the dictionary is meant to avoid that. And I also think that most people only need a dictionary in a foreign language, not in their own language. So the price (too many typos) seems too high to me.

Comment 5

[Oded Arbel]

It probably can't actually *increase* the amount of typos - maybe cause more to go undetected. But its not like I'm suggesting to enable all dictionaries at once - just enable what you use (you'd of course have to install the extra dictionaries or count on your localized installer to do that) - so if you don't normally write Dutch then there's no reason "wat" would go undetected as a typo.

If on the other hand, you do write Dutch from time to time, and you want "wat" to be recognized as a valid word in addition to the English, then you'd enable both Dutch and English dictionaries.

Also - I disagree with your assertion that dictionaries are only needed for foreign languages. If that was the case, and as most documents in the world are being written in the native tongue of the author, one would think that spell checking would be much less sought after then it is.

Comment 6

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

And what if I write part of my mails in English, and part of them in Dutch? One given mail is in one language. If that's english, i don't want dutch words to go unmarked. I _especially_ want them, because i accidently type a word in the other language sometimes.
On piece of text is in one language, so only one dictionary should be active. So in my opinion, this bug should be wontfix.

Comment 7

[Oded Arbel]

As I've commented above, this ticket isn't about having all installed dictionaries always enabled - its about having the ability to **choose** to have more then one enabled. If you want to have only one enabled - as it is now - then you can do that: I'm not suggestion to make that impossible. I'm only suggestion to make it possible to be able to **choose** (not even by default) to enable more then one dictionary at a time. 

You can just as well choose not to.

Comment 8

[waldi54]

It would also be great if Thunderbird was able to save information on what dictionary to use for what email address. I often have to write emails in different languages to people who's addresses are already stored in my addressbook. Every time I have to change manually what language spellchecker uses. This can be annoying and could easily be avoided if Thunderbird could assign a language to every known email address.

Comment 9

[Vlad Berditchevskiy]

I think, The Right Way[tm] to do such things is to give users a possibility to mark any part of a text as being written in a specific language: make selection and set the language from the context menu. To simplify this process, the keyboard layout setting can be used to set the language by default. For example, a word typed using US or UK layout is considered as an English word, while a word typed using a German layout is considered German. This is what Microsoft Word and some other programs do - and this is quite handy! Of course, this solution is more complicated because it requires:

1. Interaction with the underlying operating system to detect the keyboard setting
2. Remembering, which part of a text is written in which language

But this is the most convenient way, IMO.

And I agree with Oded Arbel: an optional (!) possibility to set multiple languages at the same time would be nice too. This is the best solution for mixing languages with different charsets. And it's not hard to implement.

Comment 10

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

*** Bug 358614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***