Kate: automatic spell checking isn't working fine.

[negora]

Hello:

I've been using Kate in Kubuntu 16.04 (i686), with and without the updates from the backports PPA. But the automatic spell checking, the functionality that underlines non-existing words with a red line, isn't working fine.

I've the English and Spanish dictionaries installed. If I choose one of the English dictionaries, the words in English are recognised correctly. But if I mix certain words in Spanish, or even random words, created by me, they're also accepted as existing words in English, which is wrong.

If I choose a dictionary in Spanish, the results are exactly the same: All the words in English are recognised as existing words, which in this case is a wrong behaviour. And many words in Spanish are marked as wrong, although they should be accepted.

It's really weird. It's as if changing the dictionary had no effect. I've tested Kate in other distributions, such as Fedora and Manjaro, and the result is similar. Or even worse in Manjaro, because it doesn't mark any word at all.

While I was looking for information about this issue, I've found the bug report "Bug 343313 - kate, kwrite Checking Spelling doesn't works". It seems to be related to my issue. In that report, someone says that it's a problem with Sonnet. Another user comments that changing the font helps. But in my case, it hasn't had any effect.

So, Are you also experiencing this problem? Given the severity of the bug, I doubt that it has been unnoticed by those users who speak languages other than English.

Thank you in advance .

[mparillo]

Or even worse in Manjaro, because it doesn't mark any word at all.

I can barely spell in a single language, so I cannot replicate your multi-language problem in Kubuntu, but on Manjaro KDE, before spelling in a single language works in kate or konversation, you need to add the language packages in Manjaro Settings Manager, and (IIRC) re-boot.

[negora]

I can barely spell in a single language, so I cannot replicate your multi-language problem in Kubuntu, but on Manjaro KDE, before spelling in a single language works in kate or konversation, you need to add the language packages in Manjaro Settings Manager, and (IIRC) re-boot.

First of all, thank you for your response . In Manjaro, before installing the dictionaries of Spanish, first I tried only with the dictionaries of English. I installed them as you suggest. But it didn't matter what I input, because nothing was marked as wrong. It didn't show any red line. The case seems more serious in it than in Kubuntu, which at least marks some words.

About Kubuntu:

In the case of Kubuntu, yesterday I decided to install the "amd64" version. Just to make sure that it wasn't something specific of the "i686" version. But this time I decided not to install any dictionary of Spanish and to try only with the ones of English. Unfortunately, the symptoms were exactly the same: correct words in English were not marked as wrong (right behaviour), random words such as "dhdhf" were marked as wrong (right behaviour), but random and wrong words that looked like real worlds, such as "copolo", "entre" and "cokeko", were not marked (WRONG behaviour).

This morning I've decided to test the KDE spin of Fedora 24 too. It hasn't Kate installed, but has KWrite. So I've done the tests with it. The result has been the same that Manjaro's: no word has been marked.

I've checked the version of Sonnet in each distribution and it looks like this:

Kubuntu 16.04 ............. 5.18.0
Fedora 24 ................. 5.22.0
Manjaro 2016-06-25 ........ 5.23.0

I was starting to believe that something had turned worse in versions 5.22.0 and 5.23.0, because the spell checking doesn't work at all in the distributions that have them installed. However, I've a netbook with Kubuntu 16.04 and the KDE Backports PPA installed in it, which contains the version 5.22.0 of Sonnet, and it works as well/bad as the version 5.18.0. So now, I've no idea what's wrong with the other distributions.

Does spell checking works fine for the rest of you

PS: I've been checking Manjaro for longer, and it has finally marked some words... But its behaviour is completely erratic. It marks what it wants. In this state, it's useless too.

[negora]

I believe that I've found out the origin of the problem, after many attempts. Kubuntu 16.04 has an option enabled by default, called "Enable autodetection of language". It's located in "System Settings" -> "Regional Settings" -> "Spell Check". I've disabled it, and the automatic spell checking has started to work as expected... At least apparently.

This option is supposed to enable the spell checking in documents that contain words in multiple languages, simultaneously. In my opinion, the name of the option isn't clear enough. But that's a different story. It's curious, because even when I only had the English dictionary installed, it didn't work well. It allowed words that weren't right according to the English dictionary (the single dictionary in that system). I guess that it's not easy to implement this kind of functionality.

Anyhow, disabling this option seems to make the spell checking work as I need.

[GreyGeek]

Nice info to know! Thanks for the heads up!