[webkit-dev] Hunspell based spellchecker

[Hajime Morita]

Hi WebKit folks,

I'm thinking about porting Hunspell-based spellchecking code
from Chromium to WebKit/WebCore.

Although it's unclear whether the porting is feasible, I'd like to
hear how much interest is there from other ports before starting
actual work.

Because the main goal is to make spellcheck available for more ports,
It would be just a waste if there is no demand.

For example, I heard that GTK+ has GtkSpell, which is based on
Enchant.  Because our code is based on Hunspell, GtkSpell based
integration is out of scope of this proposal... I have no idea about
Qt, EFL, etc.

BTW, here is an under-half-baked-rough plan:

- Extract spellcheck related methods on EditorClient,
  to interface (or abstract class) named, say, platform/text/TextChecker.
  - with keeping existing method, for compatibility
- Add a getter like "TextChecker* textChecker() = 0;"  to EditorClient.
- Implement TextCheckerHunspell, a subclass of TextCheckerHunspell
  - TextCheckerHunspellChromium and some other variants will also be
added, to make Chromium specific hooks.
- (optional) Move Mac's spellchecker implementation from
WebCoreSupport/WebEditorClient
  to platform/text/TextCheckerCocoa, another subclass of TextChecker.
- (optional) Remove legacy methods on EditorClient

This approach would make spellchecker pluggable,
so WebKit can choose preferable spellchecker at runtime with this.
(For example, Chromium port wants to use both Hunspell and system spellchecker.
 GTK port might want use Enchant and Hunspell.)

Is this beneficial for your port?
Are there other design possibilities?
Any feedback is welcome.

--
morrita