Feedback thread for experimental spell checker service

v0.3.13-beta05 adds an experimental spell checker service. This issue thread serves as a collection of feedback for this feature and will be used to improve the spell checker until it releases on the stable channel with v0.3.13. Feel free to comment down below, any feedback from suggestions to bug / crash reports for the spell checker is welcome!

Wiki entry for help with using the spell checker: https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard/wiki/System-spell-checker-service

Revision 1: #1069 (beta06) Revision 2: #1082 (beta07) Revision 3: #1082 (beta08) Revision 4: #1172 (beta10)

Known issues / Suggested improvements [will be extended dynamically]

• Dictionaries with languages containing Cyrillic characters (Greek, Bulgarian etc) fail to load (especially those from Firefox and Free Office), possibly encoding issue (Fixed in #1069)
• The APK size is too high, try optimizing (especially ICU data) (Fixed in #1082)
• Language is fixed per session, interferes with “Use keyboard subtypes” when switching the subtype while a session is active
• Czech XPI extension from Mozilla does not conform to expected format causing a crash when importing, fix importer script (Fixed in #1069)
• Bulgarian Mozilla extension license file uses different name, add fix (Fixed in #1069)
• Auto-capitalization pref is incorrectly labeled as “Spell checker” (Fixed in #1069)
• FreeOffice link leads to nowhere when used on German devices (make link statically linked to en) (Fixed in #1069)
• Best correction match should show in Smartbar (inline spellchecking)

…

[patrickgold]

Will FlorisBoard be able to work with the AOSP spell checker and its user dictionaries?

The Android framework is designed that spell checker service is decoupled from the keyboard and thus you can use FlorisBoard and the AOSP spell checker at the same time, Smartbar spell checker corrections will still be available as long as you import a Hunspell dictionary for your language. Note that Smartbar corrections are planned, see above task list.

The system user dictionary is already supported (Settings > Typing > Dictionaries), the spell checker and word suggestions can use it. FlorisBoard additionally provides an internal one if someone does not want other keyboards to access the user dictionary.

[Glitchy-Tozier]

So… is this intended? The word-suggestions show up in the text instead of in the suggestions-bar.

I’m still unsure whether i did everything correctly, but I

• Use Florisboard as spell-checker
• Use keyboard subtypes
• Used Mozilla German dictionary
• Activate “Spell checker” in FlorisBoard

EDIT: This somehow also added auto-capitalization when starting a text/a sentence. No idea how to turn it of, it’s kind of annoying.