[webkit-gtk] API for spell check dictionary detection

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Martin Robinson <mrobinson at webkit.org> 
wrote:
> I think in this case, it makes sense for Epiphany to simply use
> Enchant to look for missing dictionaries. Installation of spelling
> dictionaries just seems out of scope for WebKit itself.
> 
> --Martin

I'm not sure I agree that it's out of scope for WebKit. Installation of 
dictionaries is required to use the spell check feature, which is 
already exposed in the API, so I think a desktop application would be 
wrong to enable spell checking without providing some way to install 
dictionaries (preferably automatically). In GNOME world, this is a 
problem for Epiphany, Empathy, and Evolution, so I'm inclined to push 
as much of this into WebKit as possible, so that other apps can make 
use of it too, and leave just the UI to applications.

But if this is out of scope for WebKit, then I don't mind implementing 
it in Epiphany instead. It's awkward for apps to use Enchant directly, 
since that should be an implementation detail of WebKit, but 
dictionaries are also supposed to be an implementation detail, so using 
Enchant is not any worse than 
webkit_web_context_get_available_spell_checking_languages() would be. 
In this case, I would just want to add documentation to 
webkit_web_context_set_spell_checking_languages() to explain that the 
app is responsible for dictionary installation.

(You have definitely convinced me that my original proposal, 
webkit_web_context_get_available_spell_checking_languages(), is not a 
good idea -- at least not on its own.)

Cheers,

Michael
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