Mailspring: Add support for Grammarly / grammar check

[walkafwalka]

Feature Request?

Add support for grammar check or integration with a popular grammar checker such as Grammarly LanguageTool.

Edit: Replaced Grammarly with LanguageTool.

[walkafwalka]

Grammarly doesn't support integration with Apple Mail, the Airmail app, or Mozilla Thunderbird.

See https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000271852-How-can-I-check-my-emails-with-Grammarly-

[arkraft]

Grammarly does not have a module which could be used here, it only has a browser extension and extension for office. I found the same request for slack and they had the same answer. Only solution for using it is to write emails in the browser using this extension.

[walkafwalka]

@arkraft After researching (not heavily) alternatives, I could not find any open-source options. There are options such as https://www.grammarbot.io though.

[arkraft]

I doubt people would want their emails sent to an online service, i personally would not use that if i knew it's done online.

[walkafwalka]

If it were a third-party, I imagine it would be in the form of an installable plugin, not necessarily part core project. Grammarly has millions of daily users and collects "all text, documents, or other content or information uploaded, entered, or otherwise transmitted". Not everyone has the same issues with privacy.

There are open-source grammar checkers such as OpenOffice's grammar checker, Lingucomponent.

[bengotow]

Hey folks! Yeah we looked at trying to use Grammarly or a similar service, but it'd involve us sending your text to a third party on the internet as you compose messages, which I think would be too much of a privacy concern for many folks. It'd be a cool add-on someday, but I don't think we'll ever include it out-of-the-box.

Edit: Linguicomponent looks interesting - I haven't heard of that before. I wonder if it'd be possible to bundle it up as a node module with their native code?

[luiscachog]

+1 on this feature!!

[it2911]

I need this feature.

[Metlearm]

This would be a great feature to have! It would really speed up productivity whilst making everything more professional.

[aigoncharov]

There's a great self-hosted open-source alternative to Gramarly - https://languagetool.org/. It would be great to have a plugin that integrates with it.

[raisty]

I doubt people would want their emails sent to an online service, i personally would not use that if i knew it's done online.

There is no big difference between copy&paste text to 3rd party service and install a plug-in.

In any case, I will prefer a self-hosted instance like languagetool.org mentioned before.

[felixcheruiyot]

Any progress on this? This is the only feature I'm missing and very important for me, especially that English is not my first language.

[walkafwalka]

@raisty If copying and pasting to a third-party service is no big difference than installing a plugin, then this issue would be pointless because you can already run LanguageTool locally and copy and paste your email to it.

That being said, at the time, I had not heard of LanguageTool at the time and have long since switched to LanguageTool. I agree that an integration with LanguageTool would be better, but it should still allow users to easily use the LanguageTool servers.

By requiring a user to run the server locally, you are increasing the barrier to entry which will be a turn-off to a lot of users and may not be worth the development time.

[raisty]

IMHO Mailspring still uses service for registering an account - which is totally ok - because I think somebody need keep development alive.
Still, it is the best multiplatform mail client.

I am emphasizing the fact, that the person who chooses to register an account - should have more "cloud" services like a translation tool, etc. This will increase your income as well. I don't mind pay you if you will integrate it.

BUT! In any case, you should offer mail client without any registration and remind what they can get with subscribing.

Probably I am not the only one who is thinking about forking it and remove any connection with external service.

In the end, it is just your decision and time will show if it was good.

TL;TR

Maybe you can integrate grammar tool in your service.