Composition language spontaneously changes (Linux)

[rphair]

I'm hoping for a response from someone who has noticed a spontaneous change in the setting for spelling correction language & found out anything that could cause it, rather than conjecture about the issue. I can't file a bug report until I can determine if this is a bug, and where.

Roughly once a week, my language selection (in Thunderbird Preferences > Composition tab > Spelling tab > Language) changes spontaneously back from my preferred "English (United Kingdom)" that I have downloaded to the "English (United States)" that was installed with the system version of Thunderbird.

I don't ever change this setting manually until I notice, repeatedly in the last couple months, that the selection has "gone off" again from UK to US English... then I have to change it back again in the Tbird Preferences. Until I do this, all composition windows will use the relapsed setting as shown in the right-click menu.

I can see no precipitating event, although I see today that the "British English Dictionary (Marco Pinto)" plugin was updated automatically in the last week, perhaps even on the date I last had this reversion. If that's the problem, it would be odd that the plugin update would make some the native dictionary the default rather than itself. I'll keep an eye on that & that plugin's release history while looking at other possibilities.

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 with Tbird 52.9.1 (64-bit) from the main Ubuntu repository. There is a setting "GNOME Settings > Language and Region > Language" which I have set to both "English (United Kingdom)" and "English (United States)", though it makes no difference with this problem. Noone else uses my profile and I have very few add-ons installed (none of which are designed to mess with the language settings).

[tanstaafl]

I used to have a German dictionary installed in my Thunderbird English (USA) installation for several years and never noticed that problem.

Think about deleting the English UK dictionary add-on, uninstalling Thunderbird and installing a version of Thunderbird for English UK. That way there would be no american version of a dictionary to accidentally switch to. I don't know if the Ubuntu repository has a UK version. If not, then you'd have to stop using a distro specific build , download the UK English version from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/ , and then update the new profiles.ini file (that it creates in a similar but different directory) to point to your old profile.

If you want to continue to use packages, take a look at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/ . Ubuntuzilla should let you use packages that use Mozilla builds for Linux (not the Ubuntu specific distro packages)

[rphair]

I've never really liked the way Ubuntu / Canonical has handled the Mozilla apps & I'd rather have the Mozilla builders watching for problems like this. I've switched to the Tbird on the Ubuntuzilla PPA: https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/w ... stallation

It has version 60.0 which feels better already. If I see this again on the Mozilla build I'll try to correlate it with any dictionary plugin update & post again here. The profile folders are in the same place, so it was an easy upgrade. Thanks @tanstaafl ...

BTW one incidental difference I see between thunderbird-mozilla-build and the mainstream Ubuntu package is the latter is localised to multiple languages in the GNOME launcher. If I were doing this on a non-English system I'd have to copy those language settings out of /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop from the mainstream package.

[Gort]

Another way around this is to use a user.js file in your Thunderbird profile. That will force Thunderbird to accept settings from startup.

Create a user.js file in your profile, and add the line below into it.

Code: Select all

user_pref("spellchecker.dictionary", "en-GB");

Save file and restart Thunderbird.

Each time it starts, that setting will be maintained. You can use this for other settings.

[rphair]

Thanks @Gort, that's really helpful since the bleeding edge Tbird version on the Mozilla repo for Ubuntu doesn't support my extensions yet.

[Gort]

Glad to have helped.

Mind you, be aware that Ubuntu 18.04 now uses Thunderbird 60. It was updated to that version yesterday on my machine (running Ubuntu 18.04).

[rphair]

goodbye Google Search for Thunderbird, hello Bing...

[Gort]

goodbye Google Search for Thunderbird, hello Bing...

Not sure what's missing here or why you need an extension for this. I can select Google as my search engine choice in Thunderbird by going to Preferences and selecting Google from the Default Search Engine drop-down.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious (it's early morning and my coffee is still on the boil).

[rphair]

sorry everyone for being apparently off topic but this could be another user preferences issue...

I was about to describe my Google Search incompatibility with a history & screenshot but just found this page which does it perfectly: https://techdows.com/2018/08/thunderbir ... ngine.html

It's not OS related since I've never been able to install Google Search on the Thunderbird of anyone I work with without that add-on, regardless of computer type or age. There has long been an explanation in the Mozilla docs of why they set it up this way, due to a legal issue with the vendor (Google). There is is an open bug report about why the workaround doesn't work since TB 58: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427317

So my guess is you have another interesting customisation that makes Google search appear for you in TB 60, more portable than the above workaround. If you can find what that is & post, it would sure help a lot of people...

[rphair]

p.s. there is an config getting extensions.strictCompatibility that allows Google Search for Thunderbird to be installed. However, it doesn't provide that functionality, my guess due to the above open (and actively worked on) bug. However I can use this setting to install QuoteAndComposeManager which I really cannot live without...

see: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/m ... tfZPuKBAAJ

[Gort]

So my guess is you have another interesting customisation that makes Google search appear for you in TB 60, more portable than the above workaround. If you can find what that is & post, it would sure help a lot of people...

No, I have not installed any extensions nor customised (beyond the usual settings) Thunderbird in any way. Thunderbird was installed when I initially put Ubuntu 16.04 on this laptop, and is still here after upgrading Ubuntu to 18.04. The only extension, which came with the install of 16.04, is Messaging Menu and Unity Launcher Integration, but that's only for the notification icon in Unity (I'm not currently using Unity, but it was installed in 16.04 and I haven't removed Unity yet).

Just to make it clear, I've searched myself now and find similar complaints as yours. But, as perplexing as it is, I don't seem to be having this problem. I have Google and actually use it as my default on Thunderbird. In fact, the search settings in what amounts to "about:config" in Thunderbird shows my search settings set for Google as default, not modified.

As I said, I haven't added any extensions nor have I done anything to affect the search settings, the only extension came with the installation of Ubuntu, and it's only for the notification icon and menu, also my search settings in config are set as Google and are seen as default. I can't explain this oddity, but there you go.

Screenshot of my about:config in Thunderbird showing my search settings. Take note of browser.search.defaultenginename and browser.search.order.1, both are also set as default.

[rphair]

Interesting news but I've just installed TB 60.2.1 anew through the Ubuntu repos and a completely fresh profile, and Google Search is not available for me. Hopefully some future information will bring to light what might be different between our two situations; thanks @Gort ...

[Gort]

Interesting news but I've just installed TB 60.2.1 anew through the Ubuntu repos and a completely fresh profile, and Google Search is not available for me. Hopefully some future information will bring to light what might be different between our two situations; thanks @Gort ...

Heh, you're going to hate me for this. I've just created a fresh profile (renamed the ~/.thunderbird directory and started Thunderbird), but I still get Google as a search choice and set as default. This is very odd indeed. I can only presume that I have a package that you don't have installed which provides Thunderbird something to link to. What it might be, though, I don't know.

The gdata packages in Ubuntu seem to provide Google APIs, but I don't really think this is the issue. I have the following installed:

gir1.2-gdata-0.0
libgdata-common
libgdata22

Also, did you try changing those two values I mentioned above in about:config?

[rphair]

thanks, my default reconfiguration has all the *google* properties set as you have above (a lot of Google specific information for a product that removed Google for legal reasons ).

browser.search.defaultenginename is set to Google in my brand new config, even though Google doesn't appear in the search engine list, let alone as the default. browser.search.order.1 was set to "Bing" which I've changed now to "Google", which has no effect.

I appear to have a second set of localisation settings, tagged with a country code US despite my UK language / Ireland locality, matching these parameters:

Code: Select all

browser.search.countryCode = "US"
browser.search.region = "US"

which are somehow changed from the default even though I've never changed that parameter on this new installation. This is consistent with the weirdness reported in the OP. NOTE when I reset these parameters to the default, they disappear completely from the parameter list... I've never seen that happen before! Still my search is all with "Bing".

Only two properties remaining have "bing" in them:

Code: Select all

browser.search.defaultenginename.US = data:text/plain,browser.search.defaultenginename.US=Bing
browser.search.order.US.1 = data:text/plain,browser.search.defaultenginename.US=Bing

They are both the default values and I cannot delete the properties themselves. I've changed the value "Bing" in the strings above to "Google" - which has no effect. I now have not a single property containing "bing" and I'm still searching with it, so it looks like this version is Binged up for good.

NOTE my Ubuntu repo is ie.archive.ubuntu.com (Ireland) which should have US-specific software. I am most concerned with the fact that the properties above were reset automatically, and I've never seen properties just disappear as described above. BTW I had the two libraries above already and installing "gir1.2-gdata" had no effect.

I believe this is enough of a reason to go back to the Ubuntuzilla version & stay there. I'm going to run this whole test again on Ubuntuzilla & will post if any better results. In any case I am guessing this f*ckery is somehow due to an attempted fix of the earlier reported "open search" bug.

[rphair]

p.s., I've now switched back to Ubuntuzilla and have exactly the same properties and symptoms as above, stuck on Bing. If no further ideas I would plan on 1) following the bug report and 2) watching for release of the add-on which Mozilla still endorses in their official documentation:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427317
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... thunderbi/