Out-of-the-box broken spell-check with desktop spin

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi,

A friend reported to me today that spell-checking in gedit was broken on
their Fedora 17 desktop live cd install. After some searching around on
the web, they figured out a workaround: installing enchant-aspell.

To me, it seems like a bug to ship with broken spellcheck. There seem to
be issues with both gedit and AbiWord:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=825449
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750981
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771089
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818995


It looks like the dictionaries were pulled out of the spin when the ISO
was just squeezing under size limits to save space:
https://fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts/browser/fedora-livecd-desktop.ks

I don't think we're that space constrained today, are we?  The spell
checking packages (to support English) seem to only be a couple megs
compressed. I'm wondering, since the live cd spin is only focused on
English-speaking users anyway (IIRC only English translations are
available on it), would it be worth considering shipping the English
dictionaries to save space yet still have functioning spell check?

It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you discover
they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986

Or perhaps not installing/enabling spell-check in gedit by default since
it doesn't work by default? :-/

Anyway, this looked to me like it's been a problem for a few releases
now, across multiple bugs and apps, so I thought this might be a good
place to point it out. 

Thanks,
~m

[Elad Alfassa]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:49 AM, Máirín Duffy <duffy(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;wrote:

>  Hi,
>
>  A friend reported to me today that spell-checking in gedit was broken on
>  their Fedora 17 desktop live cd install. After some searching around on
>  the web, they figured out a workaround: installing enchant-aspell.
>
>  To me, it seems like a bug to ship with broken spellcheck. There seem to
>  be issues with both gedit and AbiWord:
>
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=825449
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750981
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771089
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818995
>
>
>  It looks like the dictionaries were pulled out of the spin when the ISO
>  was just squeezing under size limits to save space:
>  https://fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts/browser/fedora-livecd-desktop.ks
>
>  I don't think we're that space constrained today, are we?  The spell
>  checking packages (to support English) seem to only be a couple megs
>  compressed. I'm wondering, since the live cd spin is only focused on
>  English-speaking users anyway (IIRC only English translations are
>  available on it), would it be worth considering shipping the English
>  dictionaries to save space yet still have functioning spell check?
>  
No, this is wrong, the Desktop spin livecd contains translations for all
languages we support.

>  It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you discover
>  they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986
>
>  Or perhaps not installing/enabling spell-check in gedit by default since
>  it doesn't work by default? :-/
>
>  Anyway, this looked to me like it's been a problem for a few releases
>  now, across multiple bugs and apps, so I thought this might be a good
>  place to point it out.
>
>  Thanks,
>  ~m
>
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop 



-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Caolán McNamara]

On Tue, 2012-07-31 at 22:49 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  A friend reported to me today that spell-checking in gedit was broken on
>  their Fedora 17 desktop live cd install. After some searching around on
>  the web, they figured out a workaround: installing enchant-aspell.
>  
>  To me, it seems like a bug to ship with broken spellcheck. There seem to
>  be issues with both gedit and AbiWord:
>  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=825449
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750981
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771089
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818995 
aspell should be a red herring here.

So..., gedit has a spell plugin (/usr/lib64/gedit/plugins/libspell.so)
which links to enchant, and enchant defaults to including the hunspell
plugin (with the aspell plugin an optional extra) so hunspell libs are
presumably pulled in. So it must be the case that the hunspell-en
dictionaries are not installed. 

i.e. if anyone has the problem then presumably rpm -q enchant hunspell
succeeds, and rpm -q hunspell-en fails ?

I'm going to assume that it's that problem, and marked most of these as
duplicates of https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573516 and
there's a testing update of hunspell-1.3.2-5.fc17 now

>  It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you
> discover
>  they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986 
It might be nice to have a spell(:lang=XX) provides in rpm to enable
prompting and auto-install of dictionaries for a language if missing and
spelling is requested, e.g hunspell-en installed, but locale is de_DE
and spellchecking in gedit/libreoffice is activated => hunspell-de (or
German Support Collection) is suggested for installation.

I duped the rest of the bugs that are along those lines together as
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986 e.g. do something
similar to
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/AutoFontsAndMimeInstaller except
for spell checking

FWIW yum install hunspell-LANG should work in practice for most
languages. And if you use add/remove software and go to package
collections, and grab e.g. "French Support" one should get the
spellchecking, hyphenation, thesaurus etc stuff for French.

Though this is a bit messy in the add/remove software UI at the moment.
It would be nicer to break out the language support collections from the
generic "Collections" bucket into a toplevel category of its own.

C.

[Bill Nottingham]

Caolán McNamara (caolanm(a)redhat.com) said: 
>  > It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you
> discover
>  > they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
>  > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986
>  
>  It might be nice to have a spell(:lang=XX) provides in rpm to enable
>  prompting and auto-install of dictionaries for a language if missing and
>  spelling is requested, e.g hunspell-en installed, but locale is de_DE
>  and spellchecking in gedit/libreoffice is activated => hunspell-de (or
>  German Support Collection) is suggested for installation. 
The yum-langpacks plugin will pull in the proper dictionaries when hunspell
is installed if you're installing in a particular language - where we
fall down a bit is how to handle the 'I want to install language support
later" case.

Bill

[Elad Alfassa]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Caolán McNamara (caolanm(a)redhat.com) said:
>  > > It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you discover
>  > > they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
>  > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986
>  >
>  > It might be nice to have a spell(:lang=XX) provides in rpm to enable
>  > prompting and auto-install of dictionaries for a language if missing and
>  > spelling is requested, e.g hunspell-en installed, but locale is de_DE
>  > and spellchecking in gedit/libreoffice is activated => hunspell-de (or
>  > German Support Collection) is suggested for installation.
>
>  The yum-langpacks plugin will pull in the proper dictionaries when hunspell
>  is installed if you're installing in a particular language - where we
>  fall down a bit is how to handle the 'I want to install language support
>  later" case.
>
>  Maybe we should have a GUI for this in GNOME, under the Language and 
Region control
panel, that will allow adding or removing spellcheck
dictionaries easily via packagekit.
(You don't really expect new users to know what hunspell or aspell are,
right?)

>  Bill
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>  


-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Peter Robinson]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Elad Alfassa <elad(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > Caolán McNamara (caolanm(a)redhat.com) said:
> > > > It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you discover
> > > > they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
> > > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986
> > >
> > > It might be nice to have a spell(:lang=XX) provides in rpm to enable
> > > prompting and auto-install of dictionaries for a language if missing and
> > > spelling is requested, e.g hunspell-en installed, but locale is de_DE
> > > and spellchecking in gedit/libreoffice is activated => hunspell-de (or
> > > German Support Collection) is suggested for installation.
> >
> > The yum-langpacks plugin will pull in the proper dictionaries when
> > hunspell
> > is installed if you're installing in a particular language - where we
> > fall down a bit is how to handle the 'I want to install language support
> > later" case.
> >
>  Maybe we should have a GUI for this in GNOME, under the Language and Region
>  control panel, that will allow adding or removing spellcheck dictionaries
>  easily via packagekit.
>  (You don't really expect new users to know what hunspell or aspell are,
>  right?) 
It shouldn't be needed, dictionaries should be installed when a user
adds language support, the dictionaries should be part of the language
groups. If that doesn't happen there's bugs in out language support in
the yum-langpacks plugin or the packaging of dictionaries and they
should be fixed.

But from the original mail from Mo it looks like the US dictionaries
should be there already.

Peter

[Elad Alfassa]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 7:37 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Elad Alfassa
> <elad(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
>  wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  > On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting(a)redhat.com&gt;
>  wrote:
>  >>
>  >> Caolán McNamara (caolanm(a)redhat.com) said:
>  >> > > It's also pretty unclear how to add dictionaries should you
> discover
>  >> > > they aren't there (maybe some packagekit integration needed?):
>  >> > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986
>  >> >
>  >> > It might be nice to have a spell(:lang=XX) provides in rpm to enable
>  >> > prompting and auto-install of dictionaries for a language if missing
>  and
>  >> > spelling is requested, e.g hunspell-en installed, but locale is de_DE
>  >> > and spellchecking in gedit/libreoffice is activated => hunspell-de (or
>  >> > German Support Collection) is suggested for installation.
>  >>
>  >> The yum-langpacks plugin will pull in the proper dictionaries when
>  >> hunspell
>  >> is installed if you're installing in a particular language - where we
>  >> fall down a bit is how to handle the 'I want to install language support
>  >> later" case.
>  >>
>  > Maybe we should have a GUI for this in GNOME, under the Language and
>  Region
>  > control panel, that will allow adding or removing spellcheck dictionaries
>  > easily via packagekit.
>  > (You don't really expect new users to know what hunspell or aspell are,
>  > right?)
>
>  It shouldn't be needed, dictionaries should be installed when a user
>  adds language support, the dictionaries should be part of the language
>  groups. If that doesn't happen there's bugs in out language support in
>  the yum-langpacks plugin or the packaging of dictionaries and they
>  should be fixed.
>  
I think it's a dictionary packaging problem then, cause yum-lungpacks is
not related to this. yum-langpacks will install the language support
subpackage which is appropriate for your system UI language  when you
install a package that has one. Therefor I assume this bug is in comps: the
dictionaries should be inserted to the relevant language-support category.

>  But from the original mail from Mo it looks like the US dictionaries
>  should be there already.
>
>  Peter
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>  


-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Bill Nottingham]

Elad Alfassa (elad(a)fedoraproject.org) said: 
>  > It shouldn't be needed, dictionaries should be installed
> when a user
>  > adds language support, the dictionaries should be part of the language
>  > groups. If that doesn't happen there's bugs in out language support in
>  > the yum-langpacks plugin or the packaging of dictionaries and they
>  > should be fixed.
>
>  I think it's a dictionary packaging problem then, cause yum-lungpacks is
>  not related to this. yum-langpacks will install the language support
>  subpackage which is appropriate for your system UI language  when you
>  install a package that has one. Therefor I assume this bug is in comps: the
>  dictionaries should be inserted to the relevant language-support category. 
The language support groups are deperecated and likely to be removed
shortly, in favor of the yum-langpacks usage.

Bill

[Ray Strode]

Hi,
>  aspell should be a red herring here.
>  
>  So..., gedit has a spell plugin
>  (/usr/lib64/gedit/plugins/libspell.so)
>  which links to enchant, and enchant defaults to including the
>  hunspell
>  plugin (with the aspell plugin an optional extra) so hunspell libs
>  are
>  presumably pulled in. So it must be the case that the hunspell-en
>  dictionaries are not installed.
>  
>  i.e. if anyone has the problem then presumably rpm -q enchant
>  hunspell
>  succeeds, and rpm -q hunspell-en fails ?
>  
>  I'm going to assume that it's that problem, and marked most of these
>  as
>  duplicates of https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573516 and
>  there's a testing update of hunspell-1.3.2-5.fc17 now 
So we have this in the
desktop spin kickstart file:

# Dictionaries are big
-hunspell-*

I guess if you have a Requires: hunspell-en in hunspell you'll win over that, but we
should probably fix the kickstart anyway.

--Ray

[Elad Alfassa]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 6:38 PM, Ray Strode <rstrode(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hi,
>  > aspell should be a red herring here.
>  >
>  > So..., gedit has a spell plugin
>  > (/usr/lib64/gedit/plugins/libspell.so)
>  > which links to enchant, and enchant defaults to including the
>  > hunspell
>  > plugin (with the aspell plugin an optional extra) so hunspell libs
>  > are
>  > presumably pulled in. So it must be the case that the hunspell-en
>  > dictionaries are not installed.
>  >
>  > i.e. if anyone has the problem then presumably rpm -q enchant
>  > hunspell
>  > succeeds, and rpm -q hunspell-en fails ?
>  >
>  > I'm going to assume that it's that problem, and marked most of these
>  > as
>  > duplicates of https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573516 and
>  > there's a testing update of hunspell-1.3.2-5.fc17 now
>  So we have this in the desktop spin kickstart file:
>
>  # Dictionaries are big
>  -hunspell-*
>
>  I guess if you have a Requires: hunspell-en in hunspell you'll win over
>  that, but we should probably fix the kickstart anyway.
>  
So we will have hunspell-en in the livecd, but what if someone changes the
UI  or input language (this is a good reason for dictionaries to be a
special case, you need them when you add input language, not  UI language)
they won't get the related dictionary. Could we get the control panel
install the relevant dictionary using PackageKit when you add a keyboard
layout? eg. if I add Arabic it should install hunspell-ar so I would have
spellcheck when typing in Arabic.
This will make using Fedora (and GNOME in general) easier for multilingual
beginner users.

>  --Ray
>
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>  


-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Ray Strode]

Hey,

>  So we will have hunspell-en in the livecd, but what if someone
>  changes the
>  UI  or input language (this is a good reason for dictionaries to be a
>  special case, you need them when you add input language, not  UI
>  language)
>  they won't get the related dictionary. Could we get the control panel
>  install the relevant dictionary using PackageKit when you add a
>  keyboard
>  layout? eg. if I add Arabic it should install hunspell-ar so I would
>  have
>  spellcheck when typing in Arabic.
>  This will make using Fedora (and GNOME in general) easier for
>  multilingual
>  beginner users. 
Totally agree that's a good idea.  I filed this:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681084

so that suggestion doesn't get lost.

--Ray

[Ray Strode]

Hi,

>  > So we will have hunspell-en in the livecd, but what if someone
>  > changes the
>  > UI  or input language (this is a good reason for dictionaries to be
>  > a
>  > special case, you need them when you add input language, not  UI
>  > language)
>  > they won't get the related dictionary. Could we get the control
>  > panel
>  > install the relevant dictionary using PackageKit when you add a
>  > keyboard
>  > layout? eg. if I add Arabic it should install hunspell-ar so I
>  > would
>  > have
>  > spellcheck when typing in Arabic.
>  > This will make using Fedora (and GNOME in general) easier for
>  > multilingual
>  > beginner users.
>  Totally agree that's a good idea.  I filed this:
>  
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681084 
Two other loftier thoughts:

1) maybe spell checking dictionaries should get install "just in time" when the
library is used,
just like fonts get install when they're displayed.

2) maybe spell checking shouldn't have local dictionaries but use the internet like
phones do.

--Ray

[Elad Alfassa]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Ray Strode <rstrode(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hi,
>
>  > > So we will have hunspell-en in the livecd, but what if someone
>  > > changes the
>  > > UI  or input language (this is a good reason for dictionaries to be
>  > > a
>  > > special case, you need them when you add input language, not  UI
>  > > language)
>  > > they won't get the related dictionary. Could we get the control
>  > > panel
>  > > install the relevant dictionary using PackageKit when you add a
>  > > keyboard
>  > > layout? eg. if I add Arabic it should install hunspell-ar so I
>  > > would
>  > > have
>  > > spellcheck when typing in Arabic.
>  > > This will make using Fedora (and GNOME in general) easier for
>  > > multilingual
>  > > beginner users.
>  > Totally agree that's a good idea.  I filed this:
>  >
>  > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681084
>  Two other loftier thoughts:
>
>  1) maybe spell checking dictionaries should get install "just in time"
>  when the library is used,
>  just like fonts get install when they're displayed.
>  
How would you detect which language of spellcheck dict you need to install
for European languages, which basically share the same alphabet?

>  2) maybe spell checking shouldn't have local dictionaries but use the
>  internet like phones do.
>  
Some phones have builtin dictionaries. Using the internet means:
1) won't work for offline/LAN only machines
2) privacy concerns
3) spellcheck might be really slow for users with very slow internet
connection, for example Africa or India
4) we'll have to host it

>  --Ray
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>  


-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Ray Strode]

Hi,
>  > > > So we will have hunspell-en in the livecd, but what if
> someone
>  > > > changes the
>  > > > UI  or input language (this is a good reason for dictionaries
>  > > > to be
>  > > > a
>  > > > special case, you need them when you add input language, not
>  > > >  UI
>  > > > language)
>  > > > they won't get the related dictionary. Could we get the control
>  > > > panel
>  > > > install the relevant dictionary using PackageKit when you add a
>  > > > keyboard
>  > > > layout? eg. if I add Arabic it should install hunspell-ar so I
>  > > > would
>  > > > have
>  > > > spellcheck when typing in Arabic.
>  > > > This will make using Fedora (and GNOME in general) easier for
>  > > > multilingual
>  > > > beginner users.
>  > > Totally agree that's a good idea.  I filed this:
>  > >
>  > > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681084
>  > Two other loftier thoughts:
>  >
>  > 1) maybe spell checking dictionaries should get install "just in
>  > time"
>  > when the library is used,
>  > just like fonts get install when they're displayed.
>  >
>  How would you detect which language of spellcheck dict you need to
>  install
>  for European languages, which basically share the same alphabet? 
Well I guess
there's a few ways you could approach it:

- let the user pick the language (i think a lot of our apps have menu items or a language
selection in the spell check dialog already)
- guess from current locale / current input method
- do some bad heuristic like translate.google.com does

Would take work I'm probably not going to do to get this feature, so I'm mainly
just brainstorming, fwiw.


>  Some phones have builtin dictionaries. Using the internet means:
>  1) won't work for offline/LAN only machines 
Could mitigate (but not elliminate)
this problem with caching

>  2) privacy concerns 
yea definitely an issue

>  3) spellcheck might be really slow for users with very slow internet
>  connection, for example Africa or India
>  4) we'll have to host it 
I don't think these two are a given, but certainly
potentially true.

Anyway, just throwing ideas out there as food for thought.

--Ray

[Caolán McNamara]

On Thu, 2012-08-02 at 12:53 -0400, Ray Strode wrote:
>  Two other loftier thoughts:
>  
>  1) maybe spell checking dictionaries should get install "just in time" when the
> library is used,
>  just like fonts get install when they're displayed. 
Yeah, that'd be my preferred solution, i.e.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750986

>  2) maybe spell checking shouldn't have local dictionaries but use
> the internet like phones do. 
It doesn't massively appeal to me, given an example of LibreOffice
auto-spellchecking a 1000 page document because you'd end up basically
sending the entire document over the wire word by word.

And the spellchecking happens paragraph by paragraph in the idle-time
callback, checking after each paragraph if there's been any user events
in order to postpone the rest of spellchecking until later, so that
section of code has to be fast.

C.