[whatwg] Spellchecking mark III
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Fri Feb 13 12:09:56 PST 2009
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
>
> Regarding http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=2800&to=2801, my
> requests:
>
> 1. Change the literals "true"/"false" to "on"/"off", leaving the DOM values
> Boolean.
There are three of these attributes so far:
autocomplete = on/off
contenteditable = true/false
draggable = true/false
I used true/false for spellcheck since it had slightly more other
attributes doing the same thing.
Also, it's been implemented twice now, so using other keywords is a
problem.
> 2. Check the spelling of the passage ("asits"!) :0)
Fixed.
> 3. Say that the default behavior for BODY is "on" and the default behavior
> for INPUT[type=text] is "off".
The default behavior is user-agent-dependent. This is intentional since
different users may have different needs.
> 4. (I understand that it is implicit that this "SHOULD indicate" does
> not make tiny clients that do not have the resources non-compliant?)
Correct.
> Stretching it a bit, a user's language always matches the site's,
> otherwise the user would not be able to submit to the site anything that
> makes sense, except when the site is a gateway for submissions to an
> uninvolved third party, in which case said submissions should be tagged
> with the language of submission anyway (IMHO).
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Bil Corry wrote:
>
> Let me give you an example where this isn't true. I'm in the United
> States and I do contract work for a company in Germany. At the German
> company, they have an internal bug tracker for their intranet
> applications. Usually the bug descriptions are written in German,
> except mine, which are in English. So they will submit bugs in both
> German and in English, depending on who is taking care of the issue.
>
> How do you envision the UA will determine which language the user is
> writing in? And what happens when the user submits both German AND
> English, for two audiences?
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
>
> The server has two ways of knowing the user's preferred language: the
> user's preferences and the browser settings, in that order.
>
> Submitting in two languages usually needs two controls, one for English
> and one for German, with appropriate markup. The server must be
> prepared to handle this use case.
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
>
> Both of which are often wrong. Users may be multilingual, and multiple
> users may use the same computer. On the forum I administer, I post
> almost exclusively in English. However, sometimes I find occasion to
> write a post partly or wholly in Hebrew. How is the site supposed to
> know when I'll decide to do that before I even start typing the post?
> How can the site ever be sure what language the user will type until he
> actually starts typing?
>
> The server might be able to make an educated guess as to what language
> will be entered, but so can the browser. And the browser is in a *much*
> better position to check that guess, because it has access in real time
> to the actual text the user is typing, plus the user interface language,
> and -- of course -- any lang= or xml:lang= attributes specified in the
> HTML. Ergo, the logic should be left up to the browser.
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
>
> The language attribute can be changed at run time if needed. It
> requires an additional event that can be called "langmismatch". Of
> course, a more traditional selector is also a solution. If the site is
> primary English, with Hebrew fragments here and there, it is not much
> harm that the fragments are considered spelling errors (although, in the
> case of English/Hebrew bilingualism, it is unlikely because the
> character set is different). In short, the user agent is allowed to use
> whatever AI it is equipped with.
>
> Markup for German AND English submissions at the same time, as per your
> request:
>
> <LABEL LANG="de" >Inhalt: <TEXTAREA NAME=INHALT ></TEXTAREA ></LABEL >
> <LABEL LANG="de" >Contents: <TEXTAREA NAME=CONTENTS ></TEXTAREA ></LABEL >
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Bil Corry wrote:
>
> In my case, we have a single field, "bug description" that may contain
> both English and German. And in some cases, even a pure German bug
> report may reference the English form fields, such as:
>
> Legen Sie "City" vor "Postal Code"
>
> In that case, there is no way for a UA or Server to auto-determine the
> language, even if you're aware the user speaks both German and English.
>
> My suggestion is to leave the lang attribute out of the spec, and let
> the UA handle it as it wants.
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, KÅ~YiÅ¡tof Želechovski wrote:
>
> Having interjected words marked as spelling errors is not a failure.
> The same phenomenon occurs with proper names and you cannot help that.
> The UI you described is inconsistent and it should be fixed. The
> control for German should be labeled "Fehlerbeſchreibung" or whatever.
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
>
> I do not know much about UI standards but the rule that the answer
> should be formulated in the language of the question is rather
> straightforward. It is just common sense. Exceptions are questions
> like "How is that in German?".
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Bil Corry wrote:
>
> No one can control the language a user will choose to use in a textarea,
> regardless of the label used to describe it.
>
> Providing a localized textarea for every language might increase the
> odds of the user using the language the server prefers, but there is no
> guarantee. And I'm unclear what problem that would ultimately solve.
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
>
> The majority of users will answer the question in the language of the
> question, this is the normal reaction. Of course there is no guarantee
> but the odds of getting the expected result are high. Assuming that the
> user's input will actually be read by somebody, providing proper markup
> will help the readers to get something they are able to read.
Based on the above feedback, I have left the spec as-is, allowing both
behaviors ("User agents may use the language of the element to determine
what spelling and grammar rules to use, or may use the user's preferred
language settings").
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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