Moving spellcheckers into the Gtk+ stack

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

Hi,

So, everybody wants to find a steak that's slightly red.  Oops, I mean,
they all want spell-checking for free in all their text widgets.
Spell-checking is as natural a feature as i18n text rendering, or input
methods.  Individual apps shouldn't have to bother.  If editors or word
processors want to add more sophisticated features, like a spell-check
dialog, whatever, fine.

Here is a proposal:

  - Move Enchant into glib as a new module called gspell.  Enchant is a
small client-side library that loads modules that interface with
spell-checking backends, like aspell, ispell, MySpell, etc.  It's
written by Dom, uses glib, and KDE recently forked it and called it
kspell2 or something.  So, I don't think it has a lot more opportunities
as a fd.o project, and all its users are using the GNOME stack already.
Other projects (OO.o, Mozilla), prefer to interface directly with
backends or reinvent their own wrapper.  So, by moving Enchant to glib,
we bring spell-checking to the entire GNOME stack for free.  This is
quite in par with the gregex and gvfs efforts going on.  Dom is pretty
positive about this.

  - Port automatic spell-checking from libsexy and GtkSpell to Gtk+
editable text widgets.

  - Add properties and Gtk settings for turning on/off spell-checking
globally, setting default languages, etc.  Possibly adding context menu
entries too.

  - Develop a simple tool for control-center to adjust above settings.

  - If popular enough, move some spell-checking dialogs from Gedit or
other implementations to Gtk+.

Comments?

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
 Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759