376850 - "German Traditional" dictionary Add-On needed

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: de / German, defect)

Description

[Rotis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3
Build Identifier: 

Mozilla offers only a "German reformed" dictionary Add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/browse/type:3

It is declared "German" but it isn't, it is "reformed". Most German people still prefer to use and write "German traditional". So do I.

The reformed German went thru some stages of re-reforming and I doubt, the actual Mozilla Add-on is up-to-date. So traditional is always right.

Therefore Mozilla should offer a "German traditional" dictionary Add-on like many other serious software companies do, like Adobe in InDesign or Microsoft in Word.

I'm using Thunderbird 1.5 with the "German traditional" plug-ins from OpenOffice. I put them manually within the Thunderbird directory. It works well.

Thunderbird 2.0 has some enhancements and I doubt I still can use the OpenOffice files.

*** "The default dictionary is English-only. Non-English dictionaries can now be installed as extensions from: addons.mozilla.org." ***
source: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.0/releasenotes/

I also believe that most people don't like to hassle around like I do to get "German traditional" installed. For them there should be an official Mozilla Add-on.

Someone at Mozilla should take the OpenOffice "German traditional" files and create out of them an Add-on for addons.mozilla.org. There is a need for "German traditional", not only for Thunderbird but for Firefox spell checking as well.

It is like the well-known "Chinese traditional" and "Chinese simplified" problem.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Comment 1

[Robert Kaiser]

The dictionary covers the only official German spelling currently allowed by laws. Feel free to upload your own dictionary extension for unofficial spellings to AMO.

A request for an additional add-on at AMO is not "valid" as a Bugzilla bug in any case.

Comment 2

[Rotis]

There is no "law" that enforces an "official spelling". Only authorities have to use the "reformed German" for legal reasons. The majority of ordinary German-writing people don't like and don't use the "reformed German", they still prefer the "traditional German". For them Mozilla should offer a spelling dictionary. The "reformed" dictionary is useless to them. Not to forget: any serious layout program and text processor offers "German reformed" and "German traditional". For a reason!

If I were a programmer I'd build the "German traditional" Add-on from the OpenOffice traditional dictionary. But I'm just a concerned FF + TB user with very limited coding capabilities.

The actual situation is absolutely a bug. As far as traditional writers (in my optinion at least 50 % of all people) cannot use a German language dictionary in TB or FF at all. But you can see it as an important enhancement as well, which might lure many more users to Mozilla products.

Comment 3

[Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE]]

IMHO we should think about doing improvements for the application to have both dictionaries (the old and the reformed spelling) together installed.

At the moment this would only be possible by renaming the the files from "de-DE.dic"/"de-DE.aff" to something like "Deutsch - alte Rechtschreibung.dic"/"Deutsch - alte Rechtschreibung.aff". Doing this would display the language with these file names in the application instead of a interpreted/decoded ISO code. BTW: this was the solution I've been providing at thunderbird-mail.de in the past. 

Maybe the most simpel solution would be to allow these internal filenames in the dictionary.xpis provided at AMO (AFAIK this is not allowed at the moment). So this would be an AMO bug.

Comment 4

[Robert Kaiser]

OK, one bug is that we barely handle dictionaries that have no default language name.

The correct name would probably be something like de-DE-alt1910 or similar, but we don't parse such a thing into anything useful in our apps (unfortunately). That's similar for en-GB-oed, btw. That's probably a bug of the dictionary UI(s).

The non-availability of that package on AMO is strictly no mozilla.org bug though, that's why this entry here is definitely INVALID.
Anyone is free to post a dictionary to AMO. I will most likely not create or upload any dictionary that is only of historical value in legal or official treatment, and I will turn down any request for it being listed as anything else than historical anywhere on Mozilla.

Comment 5

[Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE]]

I've packed 2 dictionary XPIs, to have working example files in Thunderbird 2.0:

German old spelling:
http://www.thunderbird-mail.de/Deutsches_Woerterbuch_-_alte_Rechtschreibung_0.1b.xpi

German new/reformed spelling:
http://www.thunderbird-mail.de/Deutsches_Woerterbuch_-_neue_Rechtschreibung_0.1b.xpi

Comment 6

[Robert Kaiser]

The "new spelling" one is already available as the official de-DE one on AMO.

Comment 7

[Robert Kaiser]

Someone apparently has added a de-de-alt one there, even if that IMHO sucks, but it fixes this bug.