[BUG] Grammar checker only works with English

[goblyosgistvan]

Bug Report

Describe the bug
I'm bilingual writer, so next to English, I write in Hungarian. For English, the grammar check works perfectly, but when I switch to Hungarian, it marks many words, sometimes even whole sentences.

Expected behavior
It would be great if there would be an option to set the default language (maybe for a profile, or generally) or to have multiple languages.

Screenshots

Additional context
I really enjoy the app so far!

[DeepanshKhurana]

Hello, thank you for raising this issue. It seems I never got a notification, so I need to fix that in my GitHub Org Settings first. Apologies for not looking at this soon enough. That said, it seems @chioloenrico already made #5, although I feel we could discuss further than just disabling the spell checker. I see that the PR says it is a first step, but maybe it would be worth it to add a configuration for the language you write in, as well as being able to toggle different spell checks per project. So, assuming a user works in Hungarian and English, they could have two projects set up, one for Hungarian and one for English similar to how separate git repos work right now.

WDYT?

[DeepanshKhurana]

GitHub accidentally closed this so I've re-opened it. With #5, we at least have a toggle key F7 for the spellcheck so that should easy some of your troubles @goblyosgistvan. But this doesn't close the issue. I think language support is incredibly important here. And I will begin working on it.

Try upgrading to v1.4.5 with pipx upgrade prosaic-app

[chioloenrico]

Hello @DeepanshKhurana , and thank you. First off, the app is very interesting; I've been using it for a few days now and I find it to be a particularly compelling project.

I also agree that it would be interesting to have proper support for multiple languages. My fix was just to avoid the annoyance of the spell checker, but for an adequate setup, we should definitely have support for more languages and the ability to select different languages for different profiles.

I'm not a hugely experienced programmer, but if a hand is needed -especially since I'm actively using the product - please let me know. I'd be happy to help where I can.

[goblyosgistvan]

Thanks for both of you! I agree it's the perfect quick fix. That said, I also think it would be a good idea to add multiple language support.

So, assuming a user works in Hungarian and English, they could have two projects set up, one for Hungarian and one for English similar to how separate git repos work right now.

Yes, having the option to set the language when creating a project/book sounds good. Another idea that came to mind was having an extra step during the setup wizard flow that asks for writing languages. But probably the best UX would be automatic language recognition. I'm not entirely sure how difficult it is to add.

[DeepanshKhurana]

Okay, so it seems the notifications are finally working, which is great, and I won't miss another comment! 🎉

That said, I think here is a reasonable way to go about it without over-engineering:

• In the setup, every project also lets you input a language as a two-letter standard key, e.g. fr or en. There will obviously be validation to determine whether the language exists or is valid.
• Whether the app ships with all languages or would need to download them is an open question right now and will depend on the overhead of including all supported languages (12) in the pyspellchecker library that we use. It could also be worth migrating to phunspell, which supports more languages. If we do the latter, download-on-demand is better because it takes time to download and build dictionaries for languages, and it would not make sense to bloat the package itself with all languages.
• When a user upgrades to the new version (say v1.5.0), the first launch post-upgrade would prompt them to a language setup for their project and/or all projects, should they choose it. Otherwise, they can always do it manually or in the manage profiles section.
• For new users, it will be a part of the setup anyway.

I think this is a reasonable way to move forward without introducing too many unknowns.

[DeepanshKhurana]

Hi, @goblyosgistvan. The new spellcheck is implemented and is ready with v1.5.1. Once you do a pipx upgrade prosaic-app and then launch the app, it should automatically trigger a language configuration for you. Spell check settings are also now persistent. If you face any issues, please feel free to re-open this issue.