[whatwg] Spellchecking proposal #2

Lachlan Hunt lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au
Fri Jun 23 22:38:29 PDT 2006


Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
> Even worse: when entering text in textarea, the user actually has a 
> choice which language to write in. I think the user agent should 
> provide, besides just the control to turn spellchecking on and off, a 
> choice of languages.

Of course the UA can provide such features, it's not up to the spec to 
document what features a browser can and cannot provide for their users, 
nor how to determine the user's input language.  That is up to the browser.

One browser may choose to base it on the lang attribute, another on the 
user's preferences, or even a combination of both.

e.g. if a user has specified in their preferences that they can 
understand and write English and French.

1. The user visits a page with lang="en", the browser could 
automatically spell check in English.
2. The user visits another page with lang="fr", the browser spell checks 
in French.
3. The user visits a page with lang="de".  Since the user hasn't 
indicated that they can understand or write the language, the browser 
can default to the user's most preferred language (either en or fr).

In any case, the UA could always offer the user a way to change it at 
any time.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/



More information about the whatwg mailing list