--- Begin Message ---
- To: submit@bugs.debian.org
- Subject: language settings for spellchecker
- From: Ulrich Eckhardt <doomster@knuut.de>
- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 13:40:31 +0100
- Message-id: <200612271340.31198.doomster@knuut.de>
Package: kword
Version: 1.6.1-1
I started a document in German, and after typing a bit the English
spellchecker kicked in. So I went and tried to find where I can tell kword
what language I would like to use for the document. After lots of searching I
found an entry "spelling" under Tools|Spellcheck. Nothing there suggests that
this would be where I can select the language for this document, in
desperation I clicked it nonetheless and got a dialogue where I could select
a language while being given alternatives to the first word that wasn't found
in the current dictionary. "Okay," I thought, "it's not obvious but at least
I found it, now let's select the correct language and then..." but that was
where I stopped, the dialogue had no "OK" button. Of course, the reason is
that there is nothing like confirming changes in this context because it is
an interactive wizard that walks over the document, prompting the user for
every unknown word. The button "finish" would be closest, and after changing
the language I clicked finish, only to find that nothing changed. Even worse,
after reentering the dialogue I found that the language had been reset to the
former value[1] which is extremely annoying!
I don't exactly remember how, but finally I got kword to check words like I
want it to. I think the spellchecker's new language is only applied to
newly-written content, and after typing some more, that was checked
correctly. This is broken, but at least it worked somehow. Now, today I
needed to change something in the document and opened it up again, just to
watch kword again underline almost every word in red, claiming it wasn't
known to the spellchecker. Didn't I tell it the language of the document
before, why wasn't that saved along with the document[2]? And where the heck
is the damn language settings for the document anyway? Is there really only
a 'default' setting in the setup dialogue? If so, this would be a smack in
the face of all the efforts put into i18n!
Also, even this default language setting doesn't seem to work: I changed the
default to suit my momentary needs and still all things were marked according
to the old language. I tried reloading the document, and even that didn't
work. I now have a document that underlines the incorrect words in the
context of English but when I start the spellchecker it uses the German
settings. I even tried obvious things like turning spellchecking off and on
again to no avail.
Also, calling something a default without any means to change it on a
per-document base is basically a lie. Call it the global language setting or
do implement per-document settings, but calling it a default is just
confusing.
Okay, so much ranting for now.
cheers
Uli
[1] A simple fix for C++ might be to make the dialogue object 'static' so
initialisations like taking the system's language only occurs once but
changes are preserved. Add a nice comment for the reason and all should be
fine.
[2] In that context, I would suggest another thing: there should be a general
properties dialogue where you can select the language, possibly along with
some other per-document settings and (I miss that in many languages) a
comment field that is not part of the printed content, just like every
programming language has features to add comments, a document can and should
have these, too. Putting them inline would be good, too, but anyways, this is
a mere wish and not a bug.
--- End Message ---