Open Bug 86886 Opened 23 years ago Updated 2 years ago

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

Categories

(Core :: Spelling checker, enhancement, P3)

Product:
Core
Component:
Spelling checker
Platform:
All
macOS
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: hsivonen, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug,
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [mac:integration])

Apple provides a spell checker architecture in Mac OS X. It would be nice if Mozilla could use that spell check service.
dup of 58615 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 58615 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
verified.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
What is the architecture under Mac OS X? Is it anything related to the OS Classic Word Services architecture I requested in bug 67208?
I don't think this is really a dupe of bug 58615.
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.
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---
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.
Assignee: beppe → kin
URL: http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/m...
Status: REOPENED → NEW
...and, since Fizzilla is still Carbon rather than Cocoa, see also [http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Carbon/HumanInterfaceToolbox/MenuManager/appservices/].
Blocks: 119232
Priority: -- → P3
Target Milestone: --- → Future
Kin, have you had a chance to evaluate this?
Nope, haven't had a chance.
*** Bug 173452 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Summary: [RFE] Interface with Apple's spell checker arch on Mac OS X → Interface with Apple's spell checker arch on Mac OS X
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)
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.
Assignee: kinmoz → nobody
Component: Editor: Core → Spelling checker
QA Contact: sujay → core.spelling-checker
Target Milestone: Future → ---
I don't have any code to offer, but the lack of spellcheck is the _only_ reason Safari is still in my dock!
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.
Still using Safari just because of this real deal-breaker.
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.
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).
Depends on: 151040, 419959
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
Hardware: PowerPC → All
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.
Blocks: 606156
For reference, old (Camino-specific?) code to this effect was removed in https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f4af0c314193
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?
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.
Blocks: 1149826
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.

Anyone working on this?

Whiteboard: [mac:integration]
Severity: normal → S3
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