Bug#418430: [Debian-hebrew-common] Re: [Debian-hebrew-package] Bug#418430: mixed hebrew/english spell checking is needed

[Baruch Even]

* kobi zamir <kobi.zamir at gmail.com> [070415 17:23]:
> >Why can't this be done by simply calling the right program in kmail?
> 
> kmail use old kde3 speller that is hard coded to use "hspell" const
> string as name for a Hebrew speller. When they will move to kde4, this
> problem will not exist anymore, and multi lingual spelling will not be
> possible :-( at all. multispell is the only utility I know of that do
> multi lingual spelling.

Then the bug and the fix should be in kde and not in hspell, this is a
temporary fix for an issue that is not related to hspell. HSpell
provides the utility for multi-language spelling, the fix is in
kde/kmail and not in making hspell an alternative.

If alternatives is the way to go then one should lobby the kde
maintainers (in debian or outside) to use and support a generic spelling
program that can work through alternatives, but that should happen in a
global context and not in hspell. The same issue will exist for other
languages and doing a workaround in hspell is not the way to go.

> >IMO it is an issue with kmail calling the wrong program for you rather
> >than a need for using hspell through an alternatives mechanism.
> 
> IMO using hspell throw the alternatives mechanism is harmless to most
> users. It can help other users to take advantage of the unique
> multispell utility automatically, any user in their system will get
> multispell automatically when invoking hspell.

Making hspell an alternative is something we will need to support for a
long time and migrating to it and from it will be a lot of headache. And
it's not even the right place to fix this.

Providing a patch to kmail to use multispell is the right way.

Baruch