Spellcheck Extension for Arbitrary Web Pages

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Project Name

Spellcheck Extension for Arbitrary Web Pages

Project Description

Write an extension to leverage the existing spellcheck code in Mozilla and add the ability to highlight spelling mistakes for a given web page (i.e., vs. a textbox).

Project Leader

Aaron Hooper

Project Contributor(s)

Bart Barcicki

Project Details

0.1 Release

Make an extension that have the menus for spell checking but not yet do anything.


Project News

09/23/2008 - Talked through email with Neil Deakin about the parts of code I will need probably need to modify 10/13/2008 - Got my first extension up an running


IRC log of conversation about this extension

  • 12:14 <@dave> how hard would it be to add Tools > Spell-Check?
  • 12:14 <@dave> i.e., for an arbitrary page vs. textbox
  • 12:14 < shaver> good question
  • 12:15 <@dave> or probably what I mean is Tools > Highlight Spelling Mistakes
  • 12:19 < shaver> you'd want a presentation like the findbar?
  • 12:19 <@dave> depends on use case, but that's one good one, yeah
  • 12:19 <@dave> I'm thinking of being able to just underline all mispelled words on the page
  • 12:23 < mfinkle> look into http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/editor/txtsvc/public/nsIInlineSpellChecker.idl
  • 12:23 < mfinkle> it is keyed to use an editor
  • 12:23 < mfinkle> but the code inside could be useful
  • 12:23 <@dave> I should talk to enn I guess
  • 12:24 < mfinkle> the red squiggle is done using a special kind of selection type
  • 12:25 <@dave> mfinkle: yeah, I've seen that code before.
  • 12:25 <@dave> the selection
  • 12:25 < mfinkle> http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/spellcheck/src/mozInlineSpellChecker.cpp
  • 12:25 <@dave> but this idl looks interesting
  • 12:25 < mfinkle> is an inline spellcheck implementation for editors
  • 12:26 < mfinkle> DoSpellCheck does some heavy lifting
    http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/spellcheck/src/mozInlineSpellChecker.cpp#1223
  • 12:27 < mfinkle> whoops, down a few lines
  • 12:28 <@dave> 1278 if (! editor)
  • 12:28 <@dave> 1279 return NS_ERROR_FAILURE;
  • 12:28 <@dave> hm
  • 12:28 < mfinkle> yeah, but it seems to use ranges, so swapping in a document shouldn't be impossible
  • 12:29 < mfinkle> and notice that mSpellCheck is an instance of the real spellcheck engine
  • 12:29 <@dave> yeah
  • 12:29 <@dave> I'm trying to find uses of editor, and it's thin
  • 12:31 < mfinkle> well mSpellCheck is a nsIEditorSpellCheck
  • 12:31 < mfinkle> must go deeper
  • 12:33 < mfinkle> crap, nsISpellCheck is not public - wtf
  • 12:33 <@dave> weird
  • 12:33 < shaver> fixable, I bet
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> I suppose building directly against the tree (instead of the sdk) is doable
  • 12:34 <@dave> so this is a tree exercise vs. an ext
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> kinda like vlad's canvas3d
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> right
  • 12:34 < shaver> no, it's an extension
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> well, it can be an extension
  • 12:34 < shaver> it's just not one that can use only frozen APIs
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> but it needs the tree
  • 12:34 < shaver> like basically any useful extension
  • 12:34 <@dave> :)
  • 12:34 < mfinkle> sadly
  • 12:35 < mfinkle> but anyway - onward
  • 12:35 <@dave> I think I'll take some notes here and craft a project for future
  • 12:35 < mfinkle> http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/spellcheck/src/mozSpellChecker.cpp
  • 12:35 < mfinkle> implements the nsISpellCheck interface
  • 12:36 < mfinkle> takes an nsITextServicesDocument
  • 12:36 <@dave> how generic is that?
  • 12:38 < mfinkle> can be initialized with a document! http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/editor/txtsvc/src/nsTextServicesDocument.cpp#175
  • 12:38 < mfinkle> promising

Relevant Links

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