Multiple/language dictionaries

[ketralnis]

Need the ability to specify dictionary language. Most OSs these days ship with their own and even know what the user's preference is already.

[vtsatskin]

I'm not sure if the following will help your use case, but I've done some investigation into how this package gets its dictionaries.

Looks like the spellchecker module is used [1]. This module is a native binding to NSSpellChecker, which gets its dictionary information from OS X's system preferences.

You can set your desired spell checker from System Preferences > Keyboard > Text.

[ketralnis]

That's interesting, I definitely find that Atom definitely does not respect that preference on my machine at least

[vtsatskin]

Would you be able to give the steps to reproduce this problem you're experiencing?

[ondrejsv]

+1
On Windows the spellchecker module uses the Hunspell in the background but it has hardcoded (!) spell-checking only against the en-US dictionaries. Atom should in this case provide a way to download other dictionaries while modifying the spellchecker module to use them.

[celsomiranda]

+1
Spellchecking is badly broken on Windows.
Maybe we could use a system like Sublime, that enables the user to select which language to use. This would be easy to expose through the ctrl+p panel or in the package settings.

[anaisbetts]

In the Slack app, we do this via detecting the keyboard layout the user is typing in, no configuration necessary. I've done several PRs to keyboard-layout and node-spellchecker to make this possible, Atom just needs to combine the pieces together.

[abeldantas]

how do I turn spell-check on in a json file under windows?

[bentolor]

Stumbling over the same issue: As german developer working under Linux I mostly write a mixture of English & German. Currently there seems to be even no way to switch to German at all due to #26

[baldurbjarnason]

I'm on a relatively (i.e. few days) new Macbook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.3 and Atom doesn't respect the language I've set in my System Preferences. I've set it to British English but it quite obviously is using a US dictionary.

How to replicate it? Considering this is a fresh install of Atom on a freshly updated, new, laptop and the only thing I'm doing is writing in a markdown file, I'm not sure how much more I can do.

[borisovg]

+1 (Debian GNU/Linux, en_GB)

[arturhoo]

It'd be nice to have an option to select the dictionary from within atom itself. As a brazilian developer, I write Portuguese and English every day on a Mac without ever switching the keyboard or language preferences within Mac OS.

As a reference, on Sublime Text, the dictionary selection can be done through the View menu.

[tommarmstrong]

+1 for British English

[bjornregnell]

+1 for multi-language spell check: I mix two languages all the time (swedish+english) - in notepad++ it is possible to have two dictionaries active at the same time, causing only words that are neither dictionary underlined as misspelled, and suggestions in correction drop-down include a merge of similar words from both languages.

[victorlcampos]

1+ Brazilian Portuguese

[Munchotaur]

+1 for British English; would like access to French and Greek too

[thomashunziker]

+1 Add other languages. Why is not the chrome feature used for it?

[nlw0]

Who knew in the atomic age we would all be forced to speak english...

[hadim]

Any news here ?

 $ hunspell -D
SEARCH PATH:
.::/usr/share/hunspell:/usr/share/myspell:/usr/share/myspell/dicts:/Library/Spelling:/home/hadim/.openoffice.org/3/user/wordbook:.openoffice.org2/user/wordbook:.openoffice.org2.0/user/wordbook:Library/Spelling:/opt/openoffice.org/basis3.0/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org/basis3.0/share/dict/ooo:/opt/openoffice.org2.4/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org2.4/share/dict/ooo:/opt/openoffice.org2.3/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org2.3/share/dict/ooo:/opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org2.2/share/dict/ooo:/opt/openoffice.org2.1/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org2.1/share/dict/ooo:/opt/openoffice.org2.0/share/dict/ooo:/usr/lib/openoffice.org2.0/share/dict/ooo
AVAILABLE DICTIONARIES (path is not mandatory for -d option):
/usr/share/hunspell/en_ZA
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_LU
/usr/share/hunspell/en_AU
/usr/share/hunspell/fr
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_CA
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_CH
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_MC
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_FR
/usr/share/hunspell/en_GB
/usr/share/hunspell/fr_BE
/usr/share/hunspell/en_US
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_en_CA
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_nl_NL
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_da_DK
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_ZA
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_LU
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_es_ES
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_en_US
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_is_IS
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_CA
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_fi_FI
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_ga_IE
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_pt_BR
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_sk_SK
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_uk_UA
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_CH
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_MC
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_el_GR
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_en_GB
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en-GB
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_FR
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_pt_PT
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_id_ID
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_GB
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/hyph_cs_CZ
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/fr_BE
LOADED DICTIONARY:
/usr/share/hunspell/en_US.aff
/usr/share/hunspell/en_US.dic
Hunspell 1.3.2

How can I tell hunspell to use fr_FR dictionnary so it is propagated to atom spell checker ?

[rugk]

That's weird. So on Windows there is no way to switch the language... 😞
It would even be no problem if you could just change the path to the Hunspell files. As I already have them installed with Notepad++ spell checker plugin.

[KendallPark]

+1 Would love to use the medical dictionary installed on my computer. Need stuff like gluconeogenesis recognized.

[omninonsense]

+1 👍 to fix this issue and add support for multiple languages.

[DimensionalScoop]

Also +1 for multi-language spell check!

[cganterh]

👍

[michaelsproul]

Please no more +1 comments, I subscribed to this issue so I'd receive updates but so far it's just been +1s.

[mnquintana]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! However, all these +1s and 👍s are just adding noise, so to minimize that I'm going to lock this issue for now – we may unlock it once someone starts working on this enhancement to get further feedback.

[winstliu]

At the current pace of development, this feature will be available starting in Atom 1.11.0.