419959 - Dictionaries for other installed locales not offered for OS X spell checker

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect)

Description

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008022704 Minefield/3.0b4pre ID:2008022704

Firefox 3 now uses the global spellchecker of OS X. Normally OS X installs several languages per default on your system. All of these languages comes with appropriate dictionaries which are all available from within OS X applications e.g. Safari. The exception is Firefox 3. Running a current trunk build I only get one dictionary listed which is the current system language you are currently running. There is no way to choose another dictionary. Let's do an example:

1. OS X with German language: An en-US trunk build shows me the German dictionary and only spellcheck German content. There is no way to spellcheck English content.

2. Switching system language to English and re-login: The same en-US build now shows me the English dictionary only. The German one is gone due to I switched the system language.

Whatever language you have choosen for your OS X account each installed dictionary should be listed and the user should be able to change between them. No-one will only write in one language.

Steps for Safari:
1. Open Safari and goto Google search
2. Open the context menu of the search field
3. Choose Spellchecking and select the first entry
4. Select one of the given dictionaries (I've 13 within that list)

Steps for Firefox:
1. Open Firefox and goto Google search
2. Open the context menu of the search field
3. Choose Languages
=> Only the currently set system language is shown

The Languages menu should list each installed system dictionary. Otherwise users don't have the option to switch dictionaries for Firefox 3.

With Firefox 2 users had to install other dictionaries manually and were able to choose the right one via context menu. This isn't possible anymore under OS X. I'll mark this as regression.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

The current implementation is done in:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/spellcheck/osxspell/src/mozOSXSpell.mm

What makes me wonder is the following comment. Why there will be only one language available?

http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/spellcheck/osxspell/src/mozOSXSpell.mm#188:

// We only support the OS dictionary from NSSpellChecker so there will only ever 192
// be one. The caller is responsible for disposing of |aDictionaries|.

Comment 2

[Stuart Morgan]

At the time that code was written, there was apparently no way to answer the question "What languages are available in the system spell checker?", which is what is necessary to create such a menu. At this point, the only way seems to be 10.5+. See bug 364550 comment 5 (and to some extent 6-11) and 28

Comment 3

[Stuart Morgan]

In case it's useful to anyone looking into this, the end of bug 364550 has a Leopard-only implementation for Camino of getting the dictionary listing from NSSpellChecker to create a Firefox-like menu of Languages.

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Stuart, so this one is probably the Firefox equivalent bug of bug 420161?

As I've read on the given URL the spellchecker panel is available in Mac OS X 10.5 and later. Wouldn't this be a good solution for switching the dictionary? That would be the same way like Safari handles the different dictionaries. Using this way also users running OS X 10.4 could benefit from.

Comment 5

[Stuart Morgan]

The spelling panel is available in all versions of OS X, not just 10.5+.

In theory, yes, it's a good solution (at least from Camino's perspective; I have no involvement in Firefox UI decisions, and have no idea if those who do view platform-native spelling UI as a desired feature), but unless someone resolves the significant issues discussed in the comments linked from that bug (specifically, fixes or finds a way to work around the three blockers, and any further issues that they may be masking), it's not a viable option.

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Curiously I was able to switch the used dictionary somehow *magically*? I don't know which steps I did but now I have the English dictionary for my German OS X locale. I played around with different OS X profiles which differ in the OS X locale and used the the Minefield application. No idea if this switched my German dictionary to the English one. I'm not sad about it. Perhaps I can get some more information so people can circumvent the missing feature for now.

Comment 7

[Marek Stępień [:marcoos, inactive]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre)
> Gecko/2008022704 Minefield/3.0b4pre ID:2008022704
> 
> Firefox 3 now uses the global spellchecker of OS X. 

...and there's no way (or at least, no way visible to non-power user) to force it to use the 1+ MB spellchecker dictionary it ships with, am I right?

Mac OS X 10.5 comes with Polish localization and you can set the system language to Polish, but it does not contain Polish spellchecker. Firefox only allows me to use the English system spellchecker, but it's shipping with Polish *.dic and *.aff files, which add over 1 MB to the build.

IMO, we should evaluate if minusing the blocking1.9 request here is the right thing to do...

Comment 8

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Marek, this should be a separate bug. This one handles the switching between globally installed spellcheckers only.

We definitely need a fallback spellchecker if the OS doesn't offer one for the appropriate locale. Otherwise most locales will be broken and users won't have the availability to use a spellchecker at all.

Comment 9

[Marek Stępień [:marcoos, inactive]]

Filed bug 422760, then.

Comment 10

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Marek: is the lack of a Polish dictionary a 10.4 related thing? I see Language entries on OSX 10.5 for every language I can think of, but it's unclear if they all include spell checkers or not.

Have you tried going into System Preferences > Languages > Edit List... and adding Polish to your list? Of course, once you've done that, this bug prevents you from actually selecting that from within Firefox, but I'd prefer fixing this bug to removing the OSX Spell Check integration entirely (which is the solution proposed in bug 422760).

Comment 11

[Stuart Morgan]

The system dictionary list is a small subset of (and orthogonal to) the language preference settings you are looking at, which is why bug 422760 is definitely a distinct issue. That's true in both 10.4 and 10.5.

Fixing just this bug would provide access to about 14 languages, plus any third-party OS-level language dictionaries.

Comment 12

[Marek Stępień [:marcoos, inactive]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Have you tried going into System Preferences > Languages > Edit List... and
> adding Polish to your list?

I don't need to add it, it's already there in the top position. Mac OS X GUI is localized, but Apple does not provide a Polish spell checker. 

Comment 13

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Since bug 422760 is fixed we don't use the global spellchecker anymore. Other dictionaries can be installed and selected again. Josh, I think we can mark this bug as fixed?

Comment 14

[Josh Aas]

You better ask someone who knows more about the spellchecker. I just jumped in for one patch and I really don't know anything about it. Looks like we can mark it fixed to me though.

Comment 15

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Stuart, do you have any comments? If the global spellchecker will be implemented again in the future we shouldn't forget this bug. 

Comment 16

[Stuart Morgan]

Firefox is no longer impacted by this because of a build change to use another spelling backend, but it continues to be a valid bug against osxspell. I have no involvement with the spellchecker component though, so I have no idea how its owners would like to track bugs in osxspell (if at all).

The only reason I cc'd myself to this bug is that I have experience with some of the technical aspects; I have no authority (or interest) in the policy decisions.

Comment 17

[Josh Aas]

maybe just leave this open and put [OSXSPELL] in the title

Comment 19

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away 10/03 - 10/13)]

Ok, sounds reasonable. Have done the summary change now. Let us leave the bug open until the OS X spell checker will be reimplemented.

Comment 20

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Works for me on the latest Firefox Release 93.0 on MacOS 10.15.
After checking the "Check Spelling" option from the context menu and toggling the context menu once again, the user is offered to switch the Language of the spellchecker based on the installed languages and also suggested to add more.