Split checkers to explictly handle macOS/Windows system checkers verses locale-based checking

[dmoonfire]

Requirements

While investigating atom/atom#15912, the problem seemed to be based on calling the macOS built-in checking library with different locales. With multiple languages, that would call it with first one and then the second. Eventually, there would be an error thrown that caused the system to crash.

Then, while working on that item, we identified a problem where certain Windows 10 installations (in my case, an enterprise-distributed one) don't always provide spell-checking for non-English dictionaries and therefore couldn't use the built-in language for non-English (or whatever) languages.

In both of these cases, we need to be able to use system checker in a generic manner (without specifying language) or force the use of Hunspell even without the environment variable.

Description of the Change

So, to fix that, I got atom/node-spellchecker#115 merged that exposes an explicit flag to choose system or Hunspell-based checking while setting up the library.

Now, I need to change the UI to split built-in system checking verses locale which involves some UI changes and verification since now there are more options to control how spell-checking is done.

The three environments also have different rules:

1. Linux does not provide system checking, so it is ignored.
2. macOS and Windows can't take languages for the system checking.
3. All three need to handle specified locale checking.

Alternate Designs

Originally this was going to just be a macOS fix however the validation with Windows 10 that caused the problem identified a more generic problem.

I also considered splitting out the spell-check checkers out into spell-check-windows, spell-check-macos, spell-check-hunspell but I didn't get a definitive opinion either way. This option is still possible, it would just require automatically packaging 1-3 of these with the normal Atom installation.

Benefits

1. It won't crash on macOS. (spellchecker thread crashes atom (losing unsaved input) when using multiple locales atom#15912)
2. It should handle the Windows installations that can't check other languages.

Possible Drawbacks

1. Increased complexity to the settings.
2. Possibly slower performance if Hunspell and system are enabled.

Applicable Issues

• spellchecker thread crashes atom (losing unsaved input) when using multiple locales atom#15912
• Break out the system and known word checkers into separate packages? #154

[dmoonfire]

This splits checking into system and locale based ones as shown in the screenshot below.

Due to my access to platforms, I'm going to need help with verifying this code on various forms of Windows and OS X, with single and different languages at the same time. Specific care needs to be looked at for atom/atom#15912 which causes a crash when using multiple languages (this is handled by having only a single "system" checker regardless of the number of views open).

[calebmeyer]

macOS

Works as expected with all combinations of check boxes except only locales. Note that each screenshot is after a Window: Reload

No checkboxes, no spelling errors (I believe this is the expected result)

Different behavior with only locales checked

Note that `Aussi` (French for Also) is spelled correctly here:

[calebmeyer]

I can't get good screenshots for windows right now, but I ran the same checks. As you mentioned on slack, I'd need to install a custom dictionary for French. Windows version is Windows 10 Enterprise 1903

With both checked:

• orange error about not having the French dictionary
• no spelling errors underlined

With just system:

• same as both

With just locales:

• spelling errors all in English (so all French words are underlined as misspelled)

With neither checked:

• no errors underlined, as expected.

[lee-dohm]

Thanks for this @dmoonfire! @lkashef is going to take a look 👍

[lkashef]

Thanks @dmoonfire 🙇‍♂️

[lkashef]

Hey @dmoonfire, did you try running the tests on Atom using your PR, because the build keeps failing on the CI.

atom/atom#20400

[dmoonfire]

@lkashef. I had to use the pull checks on atom/spell-check to get it working since I don't have access to Windows or Mac machines. They were all running green, but I haven't seen this error before: https://github.visualstudio.com/Atom/_build/results?buildId=59300&view=logs&j=0da5d1d9-276d-5173-c4c4-9d4d4ed14fdb&t=b525c197-f769-5e52-d38a-e6301f5260f2&l=1396

Cannot replace with lazy function because the supplied node does not belong to an assignment expression or a variable declaration!

I don't normally build Atom from source, just the plugins. This error looks like it is pointing to the require.resolve which is based on the plugin system which I wrote earlier. Is there a chance there is a new rule or process that is transforming the file that would choke on the dynamic requires?

https://blog.inkdrop.info/understanding-atom-editor-and-hacking-it-to-build-a-react-app-4692f049795 is where I got my information about it being the resolve call.

[dmoonfire]

So far, I'm not entirely sure what the problem is to fix it. I'll try to look into it.

[ashthespy]

@calebmeyer Did you manage to get spell-check working on a non en-US language on Windows? I can't seem to make it work, even though the dictionaries are there..

[nupfel]

same issue here as @ashthespy