Minor annoyance: spell checking in Firefox + multiple languages

Posted by David N. Welton Thu, 22 May 2008 13:23:00 GMT

I write most of my email (in gmail) and submit most web site content in English, however, a significant portion is also done in Italian. I leave the spell checker in English, because Italian is, in general, quite easy to spell, so that even as a native speaker, a helping hand is occasionally welcome. However, it isn't as if I write Italian perfectly either, so the help there would be nice as well. I find it quite annoying to go change the language in the spell checker option each time, especially when, as an example, I'm responding to email and do 2 in English, one in Italian, another in English, and so on.

Ideally, some sort of adaptive technology would be possible, where it figures out what language I'm using, out of a preselected list, after a few words, and starts behaving accordingly.

It seems as if there is some discussion, so hopefully a solution won't be too far in the future.

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  1. gyom
    about 23 hours later:

    Not exactly what you're looking for, but did you try the dictionnary switcher plugin? (Single click switching, in the status bar.)

  2. harry666t
    1 day later:

    damn, why do we need Another Great Debate instead of writing a simple-as-!@#$ piece of code:

    if more than 90% of all words are incorrect:

    ..for each dictionary:

    ....if checking the text against another dictionary yields significantly better results:

    ......use that dictionary

    ......break

    ....end if

    ..end for

    ..if all dictionaries failed to produce better results:

    ....a gentle undisruptive message on that upper bar asking the user to choose a better dictionary or to temporarily disable spell checking

    ..end if

    end if

    it is annoying me too, I have to constantly switch between english and polish....

  3. Dave Welton
    2 days later:

    Harry - feel free to go write it. I simply don't have the time, nor knowledge of Firefox.