Subject: Re: Commit: fix that spelling + images bug
From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 09:38:25 CST
> Yeah. That actually creates a screw case I hadn't thought of for my prior
> suggestion that we ignore all langs we haven't explicitly enabled a
> dictionary for. If I have en-US and en-GB content and dictionaries
> available, but the en-GB dictionary is turned off, what should happen to the
> en-GB content?
>
> - Dom: fall back to en-US so I can nuke it
> - alt: wrong lang, don't check at all
>
> I suspect Dom's right, but I'm not sure. We could certainly code it either
> way.
I disagree. If a sentence is written in British English, then under no
circumstances should we try to check it with a US dictionary. If
you get a British document, then 'colour' is right and 'color' is
mispelled; it has nothing to do with Dom's (or anyone else's)
preferences for US spelling over UK one. If one needs to rewrite a
document someone else wrote in the UK to follow US conventions
(although why they would want to do that escapes me, since it is
not their original piece of work!), they have to change the language
from en-GB to en-US first, then they will get to see all the
squiggles they need, so that they can make any changes they
want to. If you do not follow this procedure, you will either get (1)
pieces of text marked as written in en-GB but spelled with US
convetions, or, (2) a document made of random mixture of en-GB
and en-US bits. Both of these alternatives, goes without saying (I
hope), are unacceptable.
Tomas
P.S. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that the differences between
en-US and en-GB (and I am sure this will be the case for other
similarly related languages) are far more substantial than spelling,
and we should stay clear from trying to do some automated
'conversion' of one to the other.
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