Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

ఇంకా తెలుసుకోండి

Where does Firefox / Thunderbird source their spellcheckers?

  • 2 ప్రత్యుత్తరాలు
  • 0 ఈ సమస్యలు కలిగి ఉన్నాయి
  • 11 వీక్షణలు
  • చివరి సమాధానమిచ్చినది firefox3151

more options

TLDR: an upstream fix in hunspell/de_DE_frami.aff from libreoffice did not make it into mozilla in three years. Why?

The original problem: When typing in German on a non-German keyboard, one types "oe" instead of "ö" and "Ae" instead of "Ä" or "ss" instead of "ß". The German spellchecker with flag "fuer" as an error and correctly suggest "für" as a replacement.

The way the German spellcheckers are defined, they will identify a single use of such a replacement but not two adjacent ones. This had been extremely irritating to me when I try to end my emails with greetings "Grüße".

I type "Gruesse" and the spellchecker does not find "Grüße" as a correction.

The fix: Back in 2022 I finally decided to try and fix this bug myself. I discovered that in order to fix it, we needed to tweak a file called hunspell/de_DE.aff or hunspell/de_DE_frami.aff. I didn't know where to submit this correction, but ultimately found the source for these files to be in the libreoffice project. They accepted my merge request in 3 years ago in September 2022. https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/pull/40 https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/dictionaries/+/136067

Today's problem: I was assuming that over time that change would propagate to all downstream projects using these dictionaries, but this is not the case.

Today, in September 2025, using ubuntu-snap installed Thunderbird version 140.2.0esr-3, and Firefox version 142.0.1-1 I can see that neither of them include the fixed dictionary - neither in de_DE nor in de_DE_frami.

So here is my question: Where does thunderbird and where does firefox get their language definitions from? Where do I need to submit this fix to the hunspell dictionaries in order for it to finally make it to release?

TLDR: an upstream fix in hunspell/de_DE_frami.aff from libreoffice did not make it into mozilla in three years. Why? '''The original problem:''' When typing in German on a non-German keyboard, one types "oe" instead of "ö" and "Ae" instead of "Ä" or "ss" instead of "ß". The German spellchecker with flag "fuer" as an error and correctly suggest "für" as a replacement. The way the German spellcheckers are defined, they will identify a single use of such a replacement but not two adjacent ones. This had been extremely irritating to me when I try to end my emails with greetings "Grüße". I type "Gruesse" and the spellchecker does not find "Grüße" as a correction. '''The fix:''' Back in 2022 I finally decided to try and fix this bug myself. I discovered that in order to fix it, we needed to tweak a file called hunspell/de_DE.aff or hunspell/de_DE_frami.aff. I didn't know where to submit this correction, but ultimately found the source for these files to be in the libreoffice project. They accepted my merge request in 3 years ago in September 2022. https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries/pull/40 https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/dictionaries/+/136067 '''Today's problem:''' I was assuming that over time that change would propagate to all downstream projects using these dictionaries, but this is not the case. Today, in September 2025, using ubuntu-snap installed Thunderbird version 140.2.0esr-3, and Firefox version 142.0.1-1 I can see that neither of them include the fixed dictionary - neither in de_DE nor in de_DE_frami. So here is my question: '''Where does thunderbird and where does firefox get their language definitions from? Where do I need to submit this fix to the hunspell dictionaries in order for it to finally make it to release? '''

ప్రత్యుత్తరాలన్నీ (2)

more options

ఉపయోగపడిందా?

more options

Ha. So a 3 year wait was just not long enough for upstream changes to make it into firefox/thunderbird. I see..

shrug:

thanks for the links.

ఉపయోగపడిందా?

ఒక ప్రశ్న అడగండి

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.