715168 - Separate personal dictionary per language

Status: NEW

(Core :: Spelling checker, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Pander]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111107 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.24
Build ID: 20111107175754

Steps to reproduce:

Use "Add to Dictionary" for unknown words to the spelling checker on Firefox and Thunderbird. Both applications were supporting more then one language. i.e. spelling checker dictionary.


Actual results:

The all unknown words from different languages got added to a single file. for Firefox, see
  ~/.mozilla/firefox/blahblahblah.default/persdict.dat
and for Thunderbird, see
  ~/.thunderbird/blahblahblah.default/persdict.dat

These are just examples for Linux but it also applies to Windows and other operating systems but only with different paths.

I understand that this is one file so that adding names of people, places, organisations, etc. are added to the personal dictionary to be used by the spelling checker later on in any language.


Expected results:

Not all unknown words should be added to a single personal dictionary which is used for all languages. Like well know spelling checkers on e.g. Linux such as hunspell and the spelling checking front-end enchant, separate personal dictionaries should be for each language, also when the user only uses a single language.

Therefore persdict.dat should be created according to the language (locale) used by the spelling checker, e.g. persdict_en_US.dat or persdict_nl_NL.dat "Add to Dictionary" should add the particular word to only the personal dictionary for the language used by the spelling checker at that time.

Additionally, an extra menu item should be offered called "Add to All Dictionaries" only when more then one language is available to the spelling checker. This will add a word to all personal dictionaries. This is also being implemented for hunspell and enchant.

Benefits for implementing above described functionality will allow users to add unknown words for a certain language to language specific dictionaries for the spelling checker to recognize as correct for that language only. It will also allow users to add language independent names to all dictionaries so the spelling checker will always recognize it as correct.

For advanced users or developers, this also enables them to more easily move words from personal dictionaries to upstream dictionaries such as enchant, hunspell or the language dictionaries add-ons. For some languages dictionaries complete systems exist where one can have their personal dictionary checked to harvest candidate words for the next release of these add-ons. This works much better if the personal dictionaries are language specific.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Comment 2

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

While implementing this, we should also reconsider writing out new additions to disk straight away and not at the end of the session, see bug 345852.

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

The implementation of multiple personal dictionaries affects Thunderbird, since Thunderbird has a function to edit the personal dictionary during a spell check. This function would have to be checked and adapted if necessary:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/editor/ui/dialogs/content/EdSpellCheck.js
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/editor/ui/dialogs/content/EdDictionary.js