[Building Sakai] FCKeditor / Firefox spell checking

[Noah Botimer]

Jon and John,

Our testing of the integrated Firefox spell checker was mildly  
quirky. The squiggly underlining worked pretty well, but the  
different FF/FCK context menus required a key-click combo to get to  
one or the other. Also, the ABC button is flaky (only works once  
sometimes). I haven't made a hard conclusion, but I'm looking for  
alternatives.

We're looking into the "WSC" mode, which integrates with  
spellchecker.net. It has a few subtleties still, so the short answer  
is that I don't have a comprehensive solution in hand at present. I  
have not looked into the aspell variety for some of the reasons  
mentioned here.

As far as applying config params and stylesheets to the editor, I  
definitely have experience there. It works quite well but I haven't  
made a stylesheet to match the basic Sakai styling. We have  
concentrated on portfolio work [1], where we have some additional  
flexibility for controlling the JS without making system-wide/macro  
changes. The crux is getting a CustomConfig specified, where you get  
to control most things. The docs for the params [2] are decent.

With all of this, FCKeditor 2.6.x is generally more polished. We're  
running it in a Sakai 2.5.x build now without hassle. See SAK-15994  
for more info.

[1] http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/VoBFAQ
[2] http://docs.fckeditor.net/FCKeditor_2.x/Developers_Guide/ 
Configuration/Configuration_Options

Thanks,
-Noah

On May 7, 2009, at 11:41 PM, John Bush wrote:

> we use aspell, I found a jsp version of the server side script  
> which I modified so I could set the aspell.path via sakai.properties
>
> http://www.fckeditor.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7219
>
> I think I attached the jsp in this ticket, http:// 
> bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-4069, you can find more info  
> there. For us having to install aspell is a real pain, I just like  
> to keep the install as simple as possible, I really don't like the  
> idea of calling out to shell scripts, something about it just  
> doesn't sit well with my constitution.   The next step is replace  
> the dependency on aspell.  I found a google web service out there,  
> hopefully at somepoint I'll get some time to convert this to use that.
>
> John Bush
> Development Manager
> rSmart
>
>
>
>
> On May 6, 2009, at 1:11 PM, Jon Hays wrote:
>
>> Hi Noah,
>>
>> I was curious if you came to any conclusions about making a change  
>> to enable Firefox Spellchecking.  I noticed that  
>> FirefoxSpellChecker is still turned off in default 2.6.  Is this  
>> because you found problems with turning it on?
>>
>> Also interested in any other work you have done locally to tweak  
>> the default configuration - Re: configuring FCK so content looks  
>> like other sakai pages.
>>
>> much thanks,
>>
>> Jon

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