Spell Checker for Firebird

Post by **James** » November 24th, 2003, 3:33 pm

Quack, for the Spell Checker 0.4 version try:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... lcheck.xpi (it installs itself in directory)

then

(I prefer profile for the front end in order to update version by making a new profile)
http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/addo ... e0_4_0.xpi

Then if you like, you could try the jar patch posted.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16409

Quack · Post by **Quack** » November 24th, 2003, 7:44 pm

Thanks James!!

I have installed the 1st 2 links u so nicely provided. Do I need the patch?

Thanks for the help!!

ksheka · Post by **ksheka** » November 24th, 2003, 9:06 pm

Spell checking "in-line" is what MS word has been doing for a while (at least since word97, probably earlier), and can be defined in two parts:

While the user is typing into the form, words that are not recognized by the spell checker will be immediately be underlined in red squiglies. In effect, the spell checker is constantly being invoked, probably checking each word after a space character (space, hyphen, carriage return, etc.) is entered after the word.

If the user puts the mouse over one of those words and then right-clicks, the drop-down menu will give a list of suggestions for the correct spelling of the word and the ability to add the word to the dictionary. (If a thesaurus is eventually added to the suite, synonymns and antonyms can be offered via the dropdown also.)

My opinion: MSFT has spent lots of money studying UI design and hasn't messed with this interface in the last few revisions of MSOffice, and a similar UI design is implemented in OpenOffice.org and many other programs that need to implement a spell checking interface. I think we should go with the flow on this one and copy the UI, and not reinvent the wheel.

Bowser · Post by **Bowser** » November 24th, 2003, 9:30 pm

Thsi would be so cool if it was built right into the browser. Something else we could brag about.

traxillian · Post by **traxillian** » November 24th, 2003, 10:17 pm

ksheka wrote:My opinion: MSFT has spent lots of money studying UI design and hasn't messed with this interface in the last few revisions of MSOffice, and a similar UI design is implemented in OpenOffice.org and many other programs that need to implement a spell checking interface. I think we should go with the flow on this one and copy the UI, and not reinvent the wheel.

Uhhh . . . wasn't Corel Word Perfect the first in a REAL spell check? I know they play second fiddle in market share to Micro$oft, but their present implementation should be considered also as long as their are no patents in the way.

As a note for a further thread: Mozilla should not get into the SCO/IBM-like patent infringement fiasco. Maybe there needs to be a bug on this.

NotACommunist · Post by **NotACommunist** » November 24th, 2003, 10:22 pm

I can't get the spellchecker to work with aebrahim's 11/23 SSE build. It crashes the browser. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else been able to get it to work??

nogwater · Post by **nogwater** » November 24th, 2003, 10:23 pm

Here's an example that I whipped up of what a context menu suggestion list could look like.

-Nogwater

max.spicer · Post by **max.spicer** » November 25th, 2003, 7:23 am

Firstly, thanks very much for all your work in doing this. We use Mozilla at work and a spell checker for text inputs has been one of the most requested features from our users!

I've been testing the 0.4 version of the front end and have a list of suggestions.
<ul>
<li>Would it be possible to have an Undo Last button, in case you accidentally change or replace a word? I thought Thunderbird's spell checker had this, but just checked and couldn't find it.</li>
<li>I think the Close and Stop buttons would be better renamed to OK and Cancel respectively. This makes it more consistent with standard dialogs. If this was done, they would also need to be swapped round, so that OK appears to the left of Cancel.</li>
<li>The Download More option in the language selection dropdown doesn't work. I appreciate this could be a spell checker core bug.</li>
<li>In the spell checker text pane, double clicking a word that appears before a red underlined word causes both words to be selected, instead of just the one.</li>
<li>The Add Signature function is a bit confusing. I now know what it's there for, but think this is perhaps a bit of "feature creep". It might be better to just provide spell checking functionality here. The presence of Add Signature in the context of a spell checker made it take me a long time to work out what it was about.</li>
<li>Selecting Ignore All for a word does not stop it being underlined in red. Like wise, if you do a replace all of "spellchecker" to "spell checker", you end up with "spell" and "checker" being underlined.</li>
<li>The Enable Wrap and Enable To Resize Window options are probably superfluous. I can't really imagine why you'd want to turn off word-wrapping, and windows that aren't resizable in Firebird always annoy me - I think they should all be resizable, but have a decent default size. If kept, these options might be better renamed to "Wrap long lines" and "Allow spell checker window to be resized". The Enable Menu option is potentially dangerous (unless you know you can turn it back on again with about:config). Removing this as well (along with the signature feature), means that the whole menu bar can go. I think this would make it a lot clearer to the user.</li>
<li>Finally, the purpose of the Edit... button is not clear until you click it. In Thunderbird's spell checker GUI, this button is next to the Add Word button, and under a Personal Dictionary heading. This makes things much clearer.</li>
</ul>
I know this is a long list, and I do apologise. I hope it's helpful though. I would love to see this feature included in the main Mozilla/Firebird builds, so am delighted that you have put in all the work in making it finally look possible. Thank you very much for all your time and effort. Great work!

Paradox52525 · Post by **Paradox52525** » November 25th, 2003, 9:00 am

NotACommunist wrote:I can't get the spellchecker to work with aebrahim's 11/23 SSE build. It crashes the browser. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else been able to get it to work??

You're not alone. I haven't been able to get any of the versions of spellcheck that I've tried to work without crashing the browser. =/

sjaak · Post by **sjaak** » November 25th, 2003, 11:18 am

Hi,

some time ago a I came across <a href="http://www.abisource.com/enchant/">Enchant</a>. I found it surprising nobody mentioned it yet. It claims to be some sort of universal spell check library where multiple word lists - including myspell - can be plugged in as a backend.

I am not a real programmer myself, but i would guess this would be the ideal solution in the long run. (i would guess there are some other priorities right now). Any thoughts on that?

kamiller42 · Post by **kamiller42** » November 25th, 2003, 12:44 pm

I think spell checking should be an operating system level service. So many applications out there have there own dictionaries and individual custom dictionaries. Spell checking should be an operating system level service, dictionary optional. See http://www.asutype.com for an idea of what I'm talking about.

AcerKev · Post by **AcerKev** » November 25th, 2003, 3:21 pm

nogwater wrote:Here's an example that I whipped up of what a context menu suggestion list could look like.

-Nogwater

There is one thing I dislike about that idea, you have to move the mouse some way to get to the alternative spellings, in Microsoft Word 2000 for example the most common correction normally requires a tiny mice movement to select it, making the selection much quicker.

I also vote for squiggly lines as they make it obvious you have misspelled a word, and can correct it as you type, doing retrospective spelling checks means I'm likely to forget what the word should be, and being dyslexic it can take me some time to suss it out again.

Also as you can see in MS Word, you can change the language from the right click, as well as adding the word to the dictionary. I haven't seen Words spell checking dialogue for 3 years nearly due to the usefulness of the red lines.

However, the spell checker as it is at present is a HUGE step in the right direction, and might mean my forum postings are easier for others to read in the future, provided I remember to run the spell checker on them that is,

I have two other suggestions - ignore http:// (etc.) lines, and when a word is corrected remove the red underline, it's a tad confusing at first.

I would be nice if some sort of Auto correct could be built in too.
I.e.
"I" becomes "I" and "myhp" becomes "http://www.mozillazine.org/", just like I can presently do in MS Word

Another thing, when clicking on the scroll bar down arrow next to the possible spellings list, double clicking selects the word next to the down scroll arrow :confused:

Also changing "etc" to "etc." (etc<full-stop>) marks "etc" as an incorrect word if you recheck the document.

wgianopoulos · Post by **wgianopoulos** » November 26th, 2003, 3:05 pm

Paradox52525 wrote:
NotACommunist wrote:I can't get the spellchecker to work with aebrahim's 11/23 SSE build. It crashes the browser. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else been able to get it to work??

You're not alone. I haven't been able to get any of the versions of spellcheck that I've tried to work without crashing the browser. =/

I can't get this to work with a build I created myself either. My builds and Aebrahim's builds are all created with VC7 .NET 2003, concidence?

Post by **James** » November 26th, 2003, 5:35 pm

I noticed that at least some of you people(if not all) having trouble getting the spell checker to come up, or having it crash , etc... are using aebrahim's or using another unofficial build.

That is just at least one connection I have seen so far, as those that can get the spell checker to work for them are using(at least I figure) the official builds.

theprawn · Post by **theprawn** » November 26th, 2003, 5:42 pm

I have the official build working fine on my system with both FB 0.7 release and the nightly from the 24th. I know I'm only ecoing the masses, here, but I too would like to see live/inline checking of text in text-entry fields.

What I'd most like to see right now, though--and it should be very easy to implement--is a keyboard shortcut to trigger the spellchecker so that I don't have to resort to the mouse.

Spell Checker for Firebird

A definition of inline, and an opinion.

Re: A definition of inline, and an opinion.

Won't work

Re: Won't work

Enchant

Spell Checking as Operating System Service

Re: Won't work