Allow multi-language spell checker selection

[arturogoga]

Version 1.2.7 introduced spell checking, with no apparent way to turn the feature off. I use Wordpress in Spanish, and the spell checking option seems to be completely broken for languages other than english.

Here you can see how, even though the menus are shown in spanish, the Wordpress Desktop app keeps trying to spell check for English.

[jasmussen]

Thanks for the report! I pulled in your image from Imgur here to Github:

[arturogoga]

Just to let you guys know the bug is still present in the 1.3.0 Merry Weather Beta update, making the application really hard to use for people who don't post in english

[mjangda]

@arturogoga can you confirm what languages you're using for your operating system and for WordPress.com (i.e. the value at Me > Account Settings; from the screenshot, it looks like English).

[mjangda]

It would be nice if we could detect the language for each word and toggle spellcheck errors accordingly (this is amazingly what Chrome does. I typed up a post with English, Spanish, and French words, and it didn't flag any of the non-en words as misspelled and even correct the spelling for a french word).

For an immediate fix, though, I think we can do the following:

• Don't enable spellcheck when the Calypso language is non-en (right now, we use the OS language).
• Add an preference to disable spellcheck (for users that prefer English as the Calypso UI language but write in other languages)

@jasmussen can I get a sanity check on this?

[jasmussen]

Don't enable spellcheck when the Calypso language is non-en (right now, we use the OS language).

👍

Add an preference to disable spellcheck (for users that prefer English as the Calypso UI language but write in other languages)

👍

I think both of those sound good to me.

[arturogoga]

@mjangda My Operating System is in English. I tried putting the applicaction (through Me > My Account Settings) both in Spanish and English, and the spell checking still tried to detect words in english. Which is weird because in OS X I have the system's spell checker configured in Spanish, as you can see here.

A simple Options under Preferences to disable spell-checking would be a great solution to this problem. At least for those of us who prefer keeping OS X in English (due to the keyboard shortcuts)

[mkaz]

A preference was created in PR Automattic/wp-desktop#118 to disable spellcheck. Additionally a temporary fix was put in to disable spellcheck if system language is not en-us will reenable when this issue is fixed.

[jamunfer]

I have the same issue on CNNEspanol.com. It only proofreads in English, not Spanish as my default is set to. I hope you can fix this asap.

[nsakaimbo]

Confirmed that, while spellchecking is now more reliable across different editors (Classic/Gutenberg), it respects the system language and does not automatically handle multi-lingual content. We should explore whether or not spellchecking behavior can be improved by using the native spellchecking APIs that are now part of Electron v8.

[soccypowa]

This issue is present in the current release on Windows too. I have the UI in English, but my region, my input method, my regional format set to Swedish, still the spell check is expecting input to be in English.... This kind of makes the app "less usefull" as i then better browse to the web instead and get the browser to do the spell checking, as it sorts the input language out properly....

[nsakaimbo]

@soccypowa What version of the desktop application are you using? To clarify - is your operating system language in Windows set to Swedish, or is the language preference limited to WordPress?

As of v6.0.0, the desktop app is now using the operating system language for spellchecking. If that's not the case on Windows sounds like unexpected behavior.

At least on Windows and Linux, appears that Electron 8 also allows the ability to change spellchecking language on-the-fly, so perhaps we can add that to our roadmap as an enhancement.

[soccypowa]

I'll see if I can find all the different languages so we can se if this is an expected or unexpected behavior. Setting your UI language to one thing and your input language to another thing seemed easier in older Windows, but still is a common practice as error message in Swedish is not very helpful. But enough about that.
My app version is 6.0.0 release. I've attached a bunch of screenshots to show what I hope should be all the relevant settings within Windows, I also have a side by side comparison of editing a post in Chromium Edge and the app. I'm trying to recall if I set my language explicitly somewhere in Edge, but I'm fairly sure it just picks it up from Windows settings.

[nsakaimbo]

Thanks for the useful detail, @soccypowa! What settings are shown under "Region" (Settings -> Time & Language -> Region)?

Also - how does spellchecking in the app compare to typing the same content in a native Windows app on your machine (e.g. something like Notepad)? Are the same/different words highlighted?

[soccypowa]

Problem is, what native Windows app does spellchecking. Notepad for sure does not, had my hopes up on Wordpad, but that failed, as did Sticky notes... The only one I finally came up with, which is a bad choice, was Internet Explorer, behaved like chromium Edge, underlining the same wrongly spelled word. But on the up and up is that at least I'm sure I have not fiddled with any language setting....

[nsakaimbo]

Interesting. You're totally right - I did some digging myself and looks like spellchecking isn't really a feature for most apps on Windows. This is very surprising. There is a "check spelling" setting, but I haven't been able to get spellchecking to work with Notepad or WordPad.

Regardless - when you go to Settings -> Time & Language -> Region what region is displayed? This is separate from Windows Display Language and Advanced Keyboard Settings that you screen-captured previously.

[soccypowa]

Sorry, forgot to add the regional settings you asked for... Here they come...

[nsakaimbo]

Update: it seems the solution here is to enable the selection of multiple languages for spellchecking. This is a feature that's on our roadmap, and will be a nice value-add for users of the app.

[KokkieH]

Another request in https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/add-proper-spell-checker-for-deskop-app/?view=all

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