Re: [editing-explainer] How can sites access browser spellchecking? (#36)

Maybe we need some general understanding of some fundamental issues here. You guys seem to feel that the browser should basically control most things, whereas it seems like a lot of us Javascript developers feel we should have a basic platform upon which we can build various types of applications that are powerful enough to compete with native apps.

I am aware of the spell check attribute, and the cause for this proposal to start at all was that that is not enough. The reality for good browser based editors today is that they generally turn of the browser based spell (and grammar) check by default, because it interferes with their application and cannot be controlled well. If we stay with the current model in which the browser controls spell checking, the browser-native spell checker is largely irrelevant for well-built editors. It seems to me that it is this situation we want to get away from.

It is not always that an entire sentence that is to be spell checked is actually shown on the screen as a single sentence uninterrupted by other HTML elements. Check my first comment above. Also, many more complex editors may decide not to use contenteditable at all --- as is already the case with Codemirror, Aloha, etc. --- because they want to allow more complex things, such as multiple colors coded carets, etc. . Currently that means that they are also shut out from using the spell checker capabilities.

Another use case is that besides having the constant underline spell checking going on, one may have an option to go through spelling issues one by one (and then grammar issues and then go through issues of weird expressions, and other checks created only within a specific app). This is what you can do in word processors already and it is a common way for some people to go through their document.If the spell checking is only being done in the browser and the application has no access to any of this, then this is not possible (without using third party web services). 

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/editing-explainer/issues/36#issuecomment-68078090