Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.0) Installed from: Gentoo Packages Compiler: gcc (GCC) 3.3.5-20050130 Gentoo 3.3.5.20050130-r1, ssp-3.3.5.20050130-1, pie-8.7.7.1 OS: Linux I enabled automatic spell checking in KMail but it did not seem to do anything. Going to the Tools->Spelling menu item reported that "aspell/ispell could not be found". aspell is installed on my system and is in the path, so I looked through all of the settings in KMail to see if there was anything spelling-related. There didn't seem to be, so I went to the Control Center instead, and in there there are indeed a Spell Checker applet which I found was set to use ispell which is not installed. Some suggestions that come out of this: 1) Instead of "aspell/ispell not found" perhaps the message could say "spelling engine is not correctly configured" and offer to open the Spell Checker Control Center applet. 2) If the options dialog is closed with automatic spell checking enabled, check to see if the spelling engine is available and if not, warn the user in the same manner as above. 3) Add the Spell Checker Control Center applet into the KMail preferences or as a menu item in the Tools menu on the main screen for easier access. 4) Perhaps add auto-detection of the correct spelling backend (aspell/ispell). Maybe it normally does this and didn't in my case because I have upgraded from previous versions of KDE, I'm not sure.
Aspell installs ispell-like fron-end. The problem is not, that kmail can't find the spell-checker, it is that it can not understand, why spell-checker is failing. My LANG is set to uk_UA.KOI8-U. I was editing a letter in English and wanted to spell-check it. KMail kept responding, how Aspell/Ispell could not be found, and would I please check the PATH. I had to use ktrace to find out, the aspell was launching (no problem with PATH), but was responding with: "No word lists can be found for the language "uk_UA"". It would be terrific, if KMail was NOT "trying to help" by hiding the REAL error and changing it with its own (bogus) error message. It would be even better, if I could set the language of the message being composed (AbiWord allows to specify the language of any region of the text, actually, and will change the spell-checkers accordingly). It would be best, if -- in addition to allowing me to specify the language explicitly -- the composer could properly GUESS based on the languages I specify in Control Center (under Regions and Languages) and the character set of the text typed so far.
Thank you for your feature request. Kmail1 is currently unmaintained so we are closing all wishes. Please feel free to reopen a feature request for Kmail2 if it has not already been implemented. Thank you for your understanding.
Instead of creating a new feature request, please confirm here if the wishlist is still valid for kmail2.
Thanks for the offer. I for one am planning to retest this with Kmail 2, but not before it reaches Debian testing. This will certainly take several months :-(
So spelling functionality has changed quite a bit in current versions of KDE. I suspect the changes came with the introduction of Sonnet. With regard to the original report, I am not so sure about how error / misconfiguration situations are handled though, since almost everything regarding spelling in Kmail2 is working fine on my system (with the exception of highlighting, I will file a separate bug about that now that I have noticed it) and there are much fewer settings, which I think is a good thing in this case. Unfortunately there are other bugs open already that suggest error situations are still not very well handled with the current spelling system; I think for simplicity this one can be closed in favour of those.
(In reply to comment #5) > With regard to the original report, I am not so sure about how error / > misconfiguration situations are handled though, since almost everything > regarding spelling in Kmail2 is working fine on my system (with the > exception of highlighting, I will file a separate bug about that now that I > have noticed it) and there are much fewer settings, which I think is a good > thing in this case. Unfortunately there are other bugs open already that > suggest error situations are still not very well handled with the current > spelling system; I think for simplicity this one can be closed in favour of > those. Thank you for the detailed feedback. Would it be fine with you to close the current one as WORKSFORME, if the specific issues highlighted here are solved?