Re: gtkspell (was Re: Announcing: Project Ridley)

[Dominic Lachowicz <domlachowicz gmail com>]

On 1/19/06, Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com> wrote:
> On 8/27/05, Chipzz <chipzz ulyssis org> wrote:
> > I'm not a Gtk+ developer, but I think one of the criteria for being
> > considered is: doesn't introduce a new library dependency, or maybe it
> > can, if it really makes sense. Gtk+ depending on a spell checking
> > library hardly makes sense, however.
>
> I would envision a solution having two parts here:
> - some framework in GtkEntry/GtkTextView to support spellchecking
> - a module which makes use of the framework. The module could
>   use Enchant, GtkSpell or any other spell-checking library
> - the module could be loaded desktop-wide, by using the gtk-modules
>   setting that was introduced for this purpose a while ago.

Enchant has been API/ABI stable for a while now, so I wouldn't mind
proposing it for inclusion to the platform at some future point (or
better still, free desktop).

Chris Hammond's libsexy has a spell checking enabled GtkEntry subclass
that depends on Enchant. It dlopen()'s the .so and looks up the
functions by name rather than linking against it explicitly. If the
module isn't found, spell checking is disabled. This might be
something of a compromise solution, since it gives consumers a soft
dependency on a spell checking lib rather than a hard dependency.

Best,
Dom