Signal-desktop: Support Multiple Spell Check Locales / Option To Disable Spell Checker

[Beanow]

• [x] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

---

Description

Currently js/spell_check.js detects and initializes a single locale.

When you speak different languages depending on the contact / situation, being able to switch is an important feature.

Please add:

• The ability to load and list multiple dictionaries.
• The ability to switch which one is used.
• Instructions on how to install additional dictionaries.

Edit https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1659#issuecomment-341287034 / https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/issues/1659#issuecomment-341457661:

• The ability to disable spell checking.
  Disabling spellchecker is available: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1659#issuecomment-521625674

Screenshots

Example of this feature in Chromium

Platform info

Operating System: Ubuntu 17.04
Browser: Electron app
Signal version: 1.0.34

[JostMigenda]

I would also appreciate the ability to disable spellcheck completely.

[allefeld]

In my installation, v1.0.34 on Debian, there is no option to choose the language for spell check. My German messages are "spell checked" probably according to an English dictionary. Please either disable spell check completely, or add an option to choose the language and to disable spell check.

[Beanow]

@allefeld That is the same behaviour as I'm seeing.
_Note the screenshot is from Chromium as an example._

[scottnonnenberg]

@allefeld On Linux, we use the OS locale and look for hunspell dictionaries which match that locale. Post your log and we can take a look at why it didn't set things up for german for you.

[allefeld]

@scottnonnenberg well then it is correct, since my locale is en_US.UTF-8. I prefer my applications with an English interface, and I also write a lot in English (academia), but occasionally also in my mother tongue. ;) And in that case it would be nice to get rid of the red squiggles, which I can simply do via the right-click menu e.g. in this brower text entry field. Personally, I don't use spell check anyway most of the time. Any way to just disable it?

[scytho]

Isn’t there a way to disable it via the debug background?

[scottnonnenberg]

Not yet, but it would be a simple change. It's on the list.

[KorvinSilver]

I'd also like to have this feature. I too use my system in English, that way it's consistent everywhere (many software I use don't support Hungarian), also I use English almost exclusively unless I talk to friends and family members.
And I assume multilingual chatting's not uncommon these days.

[wouterbruijning]

Same here! I have MacOS set to English, but Dutch is what I speak to my fellow countrymen and women ;-)

[CarliJoy]

Same here.
I need spell check, so please add a possibility to change the language.
Thanks :-)

[fschaap]

Adding my 2 cents to this request for the same reasons the other users already mentioned. I also would like to disable spell check completely. Thanks :-)

[evilphish]

Same problem here, english locale under Linux and all my foreign text gets spellchecked according to locale language. If no selection of locale or a set of locales is planned at least a switch that disables spellcheck completely is needed. In todays world we converse with many different people, often in many different languages. Guessing the language used by the system locale is not a good way to set a spellchecker and in general it is not a great design decision to force these things on users without the means to disable them. So please, at least a simple on-off switch would help immensely!

[inoas]

Same problem here - new Mac OS X desktop client v 1.3.0

My OS is English and my communications are in English or German sometimes even mixed. I'd welcome a simple setting to disable spell checking for now.

In general it seems that there is no native support for the native Mac OS X spellchecking features as usually you can go to App Bar -> Edit -> Spell Checking to disable/enable spell checking, auto correction, grammar checking, like so:

[Zibri]

same here.. disable spellcheck please.. or put an option.

[Zibri]

As of now on linux I solved in this way:

quit signal.
from root type:
mv /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker.disabled
then restart signal.

[corppneq]

@Zibri That doesn't work for me:

ls -lh /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker; echo "───────────────────────"; ls -lh /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker.disabled

ls: Zugriff auf '/opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker' nicht möglich: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
───────────────────────
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 42 Dez 25 00:32 vendor

[Zibri]

strange... I just installed it and that's what I did. And now the spell check is gone.

[corppneq]

@Zibri Type Österreich or ärgerlich or Übersetzer

[timss]

I did the same as @Zibri on Signal Desktop beta (v1.7.0-beta.2) and it's
working (thanks!). No spell checking for "Östereich" or words with other
special characters either.

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 9:48 PM corppneq [e-mail] wrote:

@Zibri https://github.com/Zibri Type Östereich or ärgerlich or
Übersetzer

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[Zibri]

@timss "One is glad to be of service" :smile:

[Zibri]

@corppneq I told you it's gone. No matter what I type.

[corppneq]

I reinstalled signal and for me the spellchecker is still on :-(

@Zibri but thanks for checking

[Brog33]

Just installed Signal myself (Windows 10) and this spellchecker is really bugging me :/

[Zibri]

Note: signal updates frequently.
After every update you should "patch" it again by doing:

killall -9 signal-desktop
mv /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker.disabled

[alexandervlpl]

To the developers: this is not a "niche" problem for just a few people. I think it's safe to say that outside the US/UK, many (if not most) Signal users communicate in at least two languages on a daily basis. In my case I'm often writing in my imperfect German and I'm desperate for some spelling help. Instead I'm stuck with an English spellchecker making everything red. :disappointed:

Also, what @allefeld does is normal: setting your locale to English even if your native language is German or something else. I see it all the time.

@Zibri: the spellchecker.disabled fix doesn't work for me either, I still have the spellchecker. Thanks for trying!

[AGlezB]

Same here. Often using more than one languague plus tech terms in the same chat I just want spell checking gone.

[Zibri]

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=17.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=artful
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 17.10"

[corppneq]

The issue still not fixed.

cat /etc/os-release

NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

[stonecrusher]

So... should we open an own issue just for disabling spellcheck?
I think that is much easier and faster to implement than supporting multiple languages.
It's really distracting and annoying.

[Beanow]

@stonecrusher I had already edited the issue description to include disabling spellchecker. I think it's clear many people would like to have this capability. Moreover anyone able to make some pull-requests would get this moving along I believe.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Hey y'all, finally getting around to commenting here. The latest versions of Signal Desktop (both beta and production) have an option to disable spell check.

[corppneq]

@scottnonnenberg-signal Thank you. It works perfect.

[zios007]

@scottnonnenberg-signal will be possible to get different dictionaries for spellcheck? I've seen that the threat started last year and seems that hasn't been introduced yet that feature.
I've just recently switched and closed accounts of my other communication apps. I prefer Signal over all of them. However, I'm on a country where English isn't spoken and will be nice to have other languages available. Like Spanish which is the 2nd most spoken language in the world :)

Thanks for your hard work and all your efforts.

[ogai]

Yes, it is safe to say that most people using software like signal communicate in at least two languages. An alternative to selecting the spellcheck language would be to select more than one language, in which case only wrong words (in all selected languages) are marked as wrong. My Google Input Method in Android works this way (even in the Signal app :-) and is very useful so.

[Beanow]

I've given switching languages a go, but quickly ended up making a lot of less-than-ideal extensions to the spellcheck package that may be better suited for upstream changes or a refactor of how spellcheck is implemented here.

Any developers willing to take a look at this approach so far?
https://github.com/Beanow/Signal-Desktop/tree/feature/1659-multiple-spellcheck-locales

For an OS where spellcheck supports getAvailableDictionaries() it will show a list of options + disable like so:

Linux and Win7 or lower however are not one of those OSes. So for Linux I also implemented a workaround to check /usr/share/hunspell/*.dic.

If no locales could be found, it will default to only enable/disable like so:

P.s. yes that many and that obscure dictionaries are actually in my /usr/share/hunspell/ D: needs cleaning up.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Beanow Wow, that's a lot you've been able to get working! What are your plans for it? One thing I will say is that many of our users have mentioned wanting to support multiple, seemingly at the same time. So there's that to consider as well.

[Beanow]

@scottnonnenberg right now I'm interested to hear your or another dev's opinion on the various overrides I did of the spellchecker packages' behaviour. Whether this is an ok approach or better suited for upstreaming or refactoring.

From there, things that need to happen:

• Testing on other OSes (I ran just linux and looked at docs for the others)
• Perhaps a few unit tests, especially if spellcheck updates might break the overrides.
• Sign agreement and PR?

[gratefulfrog]

I would also appreciate the ability to select, in the application, the current spell check language. Personally, I prefer explicitly selecting the language rather than the approach where only words that are wrong in all languages are flagged. That is, I prefer the approach used in Firefox or on Android.
Simply disabling spell checking would also be nice, but certainly not sufficient from my point of view.
On Android, the multi-language integration works perfectly.
Thanks for considering this relatively important request for a communication tool.

[Beanow]

@gratefulfrog disabling spellchecker is available already under preferences.

As for multi-language spell checking I saw two approaches.

One is the, check all words against all installed languages and only flag those that are incorrect in all languages. Though simple, seems to do the job. Can live side-by-side with explicit single language options as "All your languages" in Chromium does.

Another is to analyse the full message you're typing in order to guestimate what language it is in, and switch the spellcheck language automatically based on that. It comes with more complexity, detection is error prone and has a downside where mixing languages in a single message will show only one language as correctly spelled even if everything is correctly spelled in their respective languages. So I'm not sure whether this is worth the hassle when explicit language switching is available.

Another other approaches I'm missing?

[eligt]

My 2 cents: the first approach of "All your languages" while simpler is also most likely the best in terms of experience. This is because people who speak multiple languages may often mix words from any 2 or more of them when speaking to friends who share the same languages.

However, I'd recommend not just using all the installed languages but letting people pick which languages they want, cause sometimes you may have a bunch of languages/locales installed for the purpose of OpenOffice documents for instance, even though you don't really use those languages on a messenger.

[embray]

@eligt I also like having an "all languages" capability. E.g. for comparison I use SwiftKey for English, French, and Japanese (mixing Japanese with the other two works less well). But between English and French I get both simultaneously which is good since I am often mixing the two.

[zios007]

I agree with embray and disagree with eligt.

I use 5 languages all the time and for example with browsers like Chrome I can use them with no problem, I can write in any language and if I make a mistake it will give me options to fix it. But in Firefox it's nuts.. every time I have to switch languages I have to go and change the dictionary in the options. Something that really works pretty well in Chrome without having to change anything, just adding all the languages I use all the time.
So will be nice to have something like the chrome way of doing it instead of doing it like firefox. I know there are other tools around that do the same as chrome and I think they are much convenient.

[SteenPetersen]

Also adding my 2 cents that I would love the ability to do this.

[texidor]

Also adding my request for this feature.
Furthermore, it would be excellent if the software could associate each conversation with the corresponding language .

[kierun]

A special use case I use is speaking two different languages _in the same chat_ so having a per chat setting would be useless. Could you have true multiple language support? So, check (say) en_GB then fr_FR…

[Beanow]

I've updated my initial feature branch https://github.com/Beanow/Signal-Desktop/tree/feature/1659-multiple-spellcheck-locales. It now has cleaner wrappers for it's extra functionality and support the Chrome-like "All your languages" option.

However I noticed there may be performance issue with this "All your languages" when asking for suggestions of misspelled words. Because you get the slowdown of each language sequentially. Taking possibly multiple seconds before your context menu will render.

A test case with long concatenated words like Kaartjesverkoopbaliemedwerker which should be Kaartjesverkoopbaliemedewerker is particularly bad. Hopefully though this is limited to the Dutch dictionary on Linux. Testing the same word in single language, or single language in Firefox has the same issue.

Chrome seems to resolve this issue by not doing suggestions locally at all. It asks to send data to Google's APIs to get suggestions.

So I think this may need some testing on other platforms.

Another TODO is to look at storing preferences and what the preferences page should display.

[rozmansi]

A special use case I use is speaking two different languages _in the same chat_ so having a per chat setting would be useless.

If you borrow occasional clichés from another language, maybe an option to add those to the user dictionary would be better.

Talking person-to-person: Is there anything wrong with your native language, you need to pollute the conversation with some foreign language? ;) If you're fine with foreign language inserts, then why bother with spelling mistakes? Rather, you need an option to turn the spell checking off.

Talking in a group: It's impolite to use a language other members of the chat don't understand. The group conversations should be one-language-everybody-understand.

I fail to see a good reason, why would somebody need _all_ spell checkers in a single conversation.

[kierun]

@rozmansi Sometimes I like to help $person practice their French. At other times, we speak English…

[eligt]

@rozmansi how about bilingual people? You don't want to "pollute" your native language with your other native language? :)
When you speak multiple languages well, with someone else who does too, you often end up using both because certain concepts are easier to express in one language and some in the other. That does not mean I'd like to make typing mistakes in either.

[rozmansi]

@eligt I am multilingual too, but I usually speak to the _same_ person in one language only.

[AGlezB]

Personally I only use spell checking when writing documents o in some emails and even then I usually disable it. Don't even ask me about autocorrect. That is one _feature_ that should not be on by default.
As far as I'm concerned spellchecking is only trully useful when I'm writing in a language I'm not fluent in because it will help me convey to the other person what I actually wanted to say.

[eligt]

@rozmansi well, you need both people to be multilingual in the same languages - in that case speaking in both is quite frequent in my experience. Other one person helping the other get more proficient, or if both are proficient, as I mentioned, sometimes certain concepts, especially jokes, are better conveyed in one language over another.

[kierun]

@AGlezB It must be nice not to be dyslexic… Without spell checker, understanding me in writing is harder. And this is not about autocorrect which is a fine example of what goes wrong with AI and indeed has no place in Signal.

@eligt Indeed. I even ended up speaking in three languages to the same person. But two is more common. ☺

[ghost]

What @rozmansi is saying to you all is Git Gud (at writing:)

[rozmansi]

@eligt, I get your point but I am still not convinced. Two of the languages I speak are very similar. Using both spell checkers would void the purpose of spell checking.

Each conversation should support a configurable list of languages. That would cover all cases: you go list "en, fr". I'll put "en" only to the list.

@kierun Congratulations on your thumb up consistency. :)

[AGlezB]

@kierun
Spellcheking is a feature which --as it is currently implemented-- does not satisfy the needs of some users. That is why this issue got submitted in the first place. I'm one of those users so for most of my use cases I'd rather disable it than deal with the drawbacks.
Off topic: And yes, it is nice belonging to 93 to 97 percent of the population according to Wikipedia. If you need a wheelchair because you have no legs then use the wheelchair. If your wheelchair cannot climb stairs then submit an issue to the manufacturer or just buy a different one which can.

[kierun]

Each conversation should support a configurable list of languages. That would cover all cases: you go list "en, fr". I'll put "en" only to the list.

That is indeed a good solution. Of course, the more languages one uses, the slower it will be. However, that is expected and not a problem.

@kierun Congratulations on your thumb up consistency. :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I really mean no offence by it and I do appreciate being taken to account on my opinions. If those cannot survive criticism then they are not worth the paper they are printed on. And the irony of those words on a digital medium is not lost.

[kierun]

@AGlezB I am not advocating having spell check on all the time. I am very happy for it to be a on/off settable thing. This is good design. If it is on, I would like it to have multiple settable languages. I really do not care whether it is per chat or global.

If spellchecker is off, then that feature matters not: it does not affect your work flow at all. Why do you care? Or am I missing something in what you are saying?

[AGlezB]

@AGlezB _I am not advocating having spell check on all the time._ I am very happy for it to be a on/off settable thing. This is good design. If it is on, I would like it to have multiple settable languages. I really do not care whether it is per chat or global.

If spellchecker is off, then that feature matters not: it does not affect your work flow at all. Why do you care? Or am I missing something in what you are saying?

Not at all. Like I said over a year ago I'm perfectly happy with the option to disable it.

[rozmansi]

Each conversation should support a configurable list of languages. That would cover all cases: you go list "en, fr". I'll put "en" only to the list.

And of course, there are many people like @AGlezB that would prefer to have the list of languages set to "" (i.e. no spell checking).

But IMHO, the list of languages should be configurable per-conversation - much like the conversation colour - with a global default.

[KwadroNaut]

@eligt I am multilingual too, but I usually speak to the _same_ person in one language only.

We use and change languages several times a day. Discuss health issues in language A, exchange a recipe in language B and talk about family in language C. Or with work colleagues we'll use 3-4 languages as well, a cake doesn't get polluted because you mix sugar, eggs and flower… Guess language, change language(s), disable spell check, just like in chromium, serves almost everyone (guessing sometimes goes wrong).

[benvantende]

As of now on linux I solved in this way:

quit signal.
from root type:
mv /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker /opt/Signal/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/spellchecker.disabled
then restart signal.

Perfect solution with Kubuntu 19.04. Thanks!

[Beanow]

@benvantende Disabling spellcheck is available in the preferences screen:

File -> Preferences; Enable spell check of text entered in message composition box

---

From the recent discussion, I think it's safe to conclude spellcheck preferences are both personal and situational. Let's not be opinionated about it and allow people to choose from several options we could reasonably implement.

The suggestion of providing per-contact settings may be tricky to implement though, as this would create a new type of privacy concern. Associating a contact with spellcheck languages reveals which languages this contact is likely to speak. Conversely having no explicit language set for a contact can be an indicator of how often you talk to them, or make it less likely they are multi-lingual.

So I think such a per-contact spellcheck preference should be encrypted like any other personal information. As a nice bonus, using existing per-contact settings (like their colour) would allow this to be synced across devices. Still this means work would need to be done on the contact model level, creating new attack vectors, only to support this feature on desktop.

[KwadroNaut]

Maybe the per-contact setting should be a seperate issue, this wasn't part of the original request.

[buzo-ffm]

Indeed, the most important thing would be to be able to set the language (or to disable checking) in the first place! Everything on top of that should definitely be a separate issue.

[RalfJung]

As stated several times above, disabling checking is possible in the preferences these days.

[Querulous]

The suggestion of providing per-contact settings may be tricky to implement though, as this would create a new type of privacy concern. Associating a contact with spellcheck languages reveals which languages this contact is likely to speak. Conversely having no explicit language set for a contact can be an indicator of how often you talk to them, or make it less likely they are multi-lingual.

@Beanow I think it should be stored only locally.
Let say there would be one global setting for all conversations and you could override it in any conversation. This would be good balance between privacy and convenience.

[arekm]

In MacOS there is a system setting for spell checking (system preferences -> keyboard -> text). Signal could by default inherit these settings and not even have own settings for that. And you can set preferred (multiple) languages there.

[ls42]

Is there any news on this?

[hashworks]

While the application log shows multiple available languages it always chooses en-US for me:

spellcheck: available spellchecker languages:  [\"af\",\"bg\",\"ca\",\"cs\",\"cy\",\"da\",\"de\",\"el\",\"en-AU\",\"en-CA\",\"en-GB\",\"en-US\",\"es\",\"es-419\",\"es-AR\",\"es-ES\",\"es-MX\",\"es-US\",\"et\",\"fa\",\"fo\",\"fr\",\"he\",\"hi\",\"hr\",\"hu\",\"hy\",\"id\",\"it\",\"ko\",\"lt\",\"lv\",\"nb\",\"nl\",\"pl\",\"pt-BR\",\"pt-PT\",\"ro\",\"ru\",\"sh\",\"sk\",\"sl\",\"sq\",\"sr\",\"sv\",\"ta\",\"tg\",\"tr\",\"uk\",\"vi\"]
spellcheck: setting languages to:  [\"en-US\"]

This also happens when I adjust the languages in .config/Signal/Preferences to ["de"], it always overrides that setting with en-US.

[louisgag]

I have the same behavior as pointed out by @hashworks using Ubuntu 20.04. The only way I manage to change the spellcheck language is by running signal using as command such as LC_ALL=de signal-desktop but that still only allows one language per session...

[v0lta]

I am also on 20.04 the ability to choose the dictionary would be really nice!