86886 - Interface with Apple's spell checker arch on Mac OS X

Status: NEW

(Core :: Spelling checker, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Apple provides a spell checker architecture in Mac OS X. It would be nice if
Mozilla could use that spell check service.

Comment 1

[rubydoo123]

dup of 58615

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 58615 ***

Comment 2

[sujay]

verified.

Comment 3

[Greg K.]

What is the architecture under Mac OS X? Is it anything related to the OS Classic Word 
Services architecture I requested in bug 67208?

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

I don't think this is really a dupe of bug 58615.

Comment 5

[Greg K.]

Reopening as I suspect this is not exactly the same as bug 58615.

This bug probably depends on 58615. That bug appears to be about opening up the
spelling checking system to outside components, while this one is specifically
about hooking up to Mac OS X's built-in spelling checker Service; an alternative
to bundling yet another spelling checker with an application.

Comment 6

[Greg K.]

Reassigning to Kin per Beppe for re-evaluation. Kin, please see my Comment #5.

I've also added the URL for the relevant Apple developer documentation.

Comment 7

[Greg K.]

...and, since Fizzilla is still Carbon rather than Cocoa, see also
[http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Carbon/HumanInterfaceToolbox/MenuManager/appservices/].

Comment 8

[Greg K.]

Kin, have you had a chance to evaluate this?

Comment 9

[kinmoz]

Nope, haven't had a chance.

Comment 10

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

Here's some sample code:

http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/Sample_Code/Cocoa/SpellingChecker.htm

Comment 11

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

Updated sample code with new Jag bits:

http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/Sample_Code/OS_Utilities/SpellingChecker-CarbonCocoa.htm

Comment 12

[Malcolm Rowe]

*** Bug 173452 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Dac Chartrand]

Making noise... 

Apple Spell is already there for the using, by default, on all OSX
installations. Mozilla should take advantage of this for the email client and
save itself from more memory bloat (at least comparitavely to other platforms)

Comment 14

[Bob Frank]

In NSTextView there is a method, -
(void)setContinuousSpellCheckingEnabled:(BOOL)flag

that should do what you need to do, or take a look at the documentation.  Good
Luck & keep up the good work.

Comment 15

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/SpellingChecker-CocoaCarbon/SpellingChecker-CocoaCarbon.html

some more sample code.  This one is procedural c wrappers around the Cocoa
classes for a DIY UI.

Comment 16

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

this one with a MachO bundle:
http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/SpellingChecker-CarbonCocoa-Bundled/SpellingChecker-CarbonCocoa-Bundled.html

Comment 17

[Harvey]

I don't have any code to offer, but the lack of spellcheck is the _only_ reason
Safari is still in my dock!

Comment 18

[oatmeal]

This is absolutely NOT a duplicate of 58615.  That's "Need to investigate sharing the XP portion of the Netscape 6 spellchecker."  

If that was worked on it wouldn't even touch this one.  Super! It works on XP.  Not on the Mac.  

The Macintosh Operating System has a spell checker built-into it, available to every Carbon application.  

Comment 19

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

This should be fixed in trunk products, but see bug 343535 comment 3 and bug 343535 comment 5.

Comment 20

[xApple]

Still using Safari just because of this real deal-breaker.

Comment 21

[TommyWillB]

Process question... How can an issue entered in 2001 still be in the status "New"?

If this isn't going to be addressed, let's mark it WONTFIX.

Comment 22

[Steffen Wilberg]

This was already fixed by bug 151040 (for all apps, not just Camino).

But the osxspell code doesn't allow to switch the dictionary language, and OS X only ships 14 dictionaries or so, but we need a lot more.
So bug 422760 reverted that and made us use hunspell on all platforms and apps except Camino, which still uses osxspell.

Reenabling osxspell requires fixing bug 419959 (allow to switch the dictionaries) and a solution for the missing locales, like third-party OS-level dictionaries, or converting the hunspell dictionaries to OS X dictionaries.

However, the spellcheck code first needs an active, dedicated developer (owner).

Comment 23

[Nomis101]

Found this bug and I also think this would be a good improvement. Because the mozilla spell checker in Thunderbird doesn't work very well for me at the moment. I hope there is a solution for the problems mentioned in #22. 
But the url at the top is a way old, I think. Don't know what the original page was, but this seems newer: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SpellCheck/SpellCheck.html

Comment 24

[Jürgen Kreileder]

A big plus of the OS X spell checker is that it can guess the used language.  It actually even handles multiple languages in the same text component quite fine.

Comment 25

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

For reference, old (Camino-specific?) code to this effect was removed in
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f4af0c314193

Comment 26

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

What languages does the macOS system spell checker support that Hunspell doesn't, except Finnish? (At least as of El Capitan, the macOS system spell checker support for Finnish is inferior to Voikko [Ubuntu/Debian system spell checker for Finnish] and the Windows 10 system spell checker for Finnish.)

What languages does the macOS system spell checker support better than Hunspell does?

Comment 27

[xApple]

It's not about better support or more languages, it's about the lack integration with the OS which makes the product unattractive.

Users get used to a spell checker and want to use the same everywhere. They don't want to re-learn a new interface just for your product.

Users also train and add words to the native spell checker. Absolutely no one wants to start that work again with each new program that decides to bundle its own service that the OS already provides.

If you don't take OS specific integration seriously, your users will not take your product seriously.

Comment 29

[almarma]

I wrote on Reddit asking why Firefox doesn't check spelling and I got a link to this bug report. It's very very sad that after 17 years Firefox still doesn't do this to integrate better with the OS it is in. I think the goal of every web browser it to get the maximum number of users, right? I'm 100% sure most users will consider this a problem and won't spend a single minute trying to manually add dictionaries (I had to ask on Reddit to find out there's such repository of languages).

I don't know how difficult it is to enable the use of the system dictionary for MacOS, but I bet it has to be really easy, and one less headache to think about in the future. Also, as another user pointed out, MacOS own dictionary detects the language you're writing on and changes automatically. For us people living abroad or people who use more than one language everyday, that's gold. It looks like a simple feature, and I think it really is, but it annoys me enough to think about looking for an alternative browser to feel more comfortable when writing. I really think this should be considered and changed, at least to try for a year, considering it has been 17 years without using it ;).

Thank you

Comment 30

[Luke deGruchy]

With all due respect, please let us spellcheck using the keyboard on macOS in one of two ways (either one works for me):

a) Re-enable CTRL-SPACE or some other shortcut to invoke the context menu from the command line
b) Integrate the macOS spellcheck API as this bugzilla issue requests

Currently, neither option exists for Firefox on macOS.

Of all the three major browsers on macOS, Firefox is by far the worst spellchecking.  At least in Chrome, a user can invoke command-colon to pop-up a spellchecker menu.   No such option exists for Firefox.

Also, right-clicking from the keyboard is not the same thing as invoking the context menu from the keyboard, as the arguments for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435164 imply.

Comment 31

[Roland Crosby]

Anyone working on this?