Community:SummerOfCode09:Brainstorming: Difference between revisions

|Support system spellcheck services on Mac and/or Linux/GTK

|Currently Firefox and other Mozilla products bundle the Hunspell spell-checking engine. It would be great if we could (perhaps optionally at build time and/or run-time) use the system dictionary. For example, that would let people use an existing "user dictionary" of words they've added in other applications. On Mac, there's [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSSpellChecker_Class/Reference/Reference.html NSSpellChecker] and GTK applications seem to use [http://www.abisource.com/projects/enchant/ Enchant]. The simplest approach would probably be to add a build-time option to use Enchant or NSSpellChecker instead of Hunspell, with code #ifdefs to call those other APIs instead of Hunspell.

|Robert O'Callahan

|The Mac code already exists, and all Moz apps used to use it on the trunk prior to 2008.  However, there was much rancor, and osxspell was turned off for all applications other than Camino.  Before someone invests time in this again, it's probably a good idea to get everyone on the same page as to whether it's really wanted or not (and/or if the complaints can be addressed).  See {{bug|422760}}, {{bug|419959}}, and {{bug|343535}} (particularly comments 5 and 10) for the backstory and known issues.  —[[User:Sardisson|sardisson]]