564681 - New AM: Dictionaries should be moved to "languages" or get their own tab

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 338074

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[lkzpj456]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; de; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 FireTorrent/2.0.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: 

Because the Add-ons manager gets a redesign, I wanna suggest, that all installed dictionaries should be listed in "languages" or should get their own tab: "dictionaries". Because they aren't extensions as such and aren't listed as those on the add-ons website. But besides the sense of this change, it would also let the manager appear more tidy and neat.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Needs some ux feedback.

Comment 2

[Paul [pwd]]

I assumed that's what languages were for. I do hope they'll go there.

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

So the option is to either mix up dictionaries with locale packs or with extensions.

FWIW we don't have a way to detect that an extension provides a dictionary right now which means doing anything other than mixing them in with extension will require dictionaries to update themselves.

Comment 4

[Paul [pwd]]

Wouldn't such an idea allow the separation of coding and language in extensions and thus even make it feasible for third-parties to release locales for extensions without relying on the original author? Also it could bring down the size of some extensions?

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Wouldn't such an idea allow the separation of coding and language in extensions
> and thus even make it feasible for third-parties to release locales for
> extensions without relying on the original author? Also it could bring down the
> size of some extensions?

That is nothing to do with this bug. This bug is about where to display dictionaries in the add-ons manager.

Third-parties can already release locales for extensions without relying on the original author.

Comment 6

[lkzpj456]

(In reply to comment #3)
> FWIW we don't have a way to detect that an extension provides a dictionary
> right now which means doing anything other than mixing them in with extension
> will require dictionaries to update themselves.

But the dictionaries are already listed in "languages" (context menu) for the spelling checker, so why wouldn't it be possible for the add-ons manager, too?

Comment 7

[Paul [pwd]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > Wouldn't such an idea allow the separation of coding and language in extensions
> > and thus even make it feasible for third-parties to release locales for
> > extensions without relying on the original author? Also it could bring down the
> > size of some extensions?
> 
> That is nothing to do with this bug. This bug is about where to display
> dictionaries in the add-ons manager.
> 
> Third-parties can already release locales for extensions without relying on the
> original author.

Sorry, I was just thinking about the new possibilities of which such a decision
would enable and would as such, support such a decision to move dictionaries to
the languages section.

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > FWIW we don't have a way to detect that an extension provides a dictionary
> > right now which means doing anything other than mixing them in with extension
> > will require dictionaries to update themselves.
> 
> But the dictionaries are already listed in "languages" (context menu) for the
> spelling checker, so why wouldn't it be possible for the add-ons manager, too?

The way things work right now is that an extension when installed may provide a dictionary for the spell checking service to use (in addition to doing anything else). To move these into the languages section we'd need to detect that (not impossible) and really answer the question of what to do if the extension is more than just a dictionary. The cleanest solution is the have dictionaries declare themselves as just that with a new add-on type.