Apparently Empathy is using Enchant for spell checking. It should properly inspect which dictionaries are installed and differentiate between en_GB and en_US and other dictionaries available.
One can set manually /org/gnome/empathy/conversation/spell-checker- languages in dconf to "en_GB,en-US,nl" if you would like to check spelling in English (British), American and Dutch. However using multiple dictionaries at the same time is *NOT* recommended by the spell checkers, even though the options is offered with Enchant and underlying checkers. For proper spell checking, fix this bug as follows: 1) Offer in the Spell Checking tab in Preferences an option "Check spelling as you type" (boolean) which enables/disables spell checking 2) When this option is enables, a 1-out-of-N selection is enabled for all available dictionaries. The user can select only one a time. 3) Offer in the chat dialogues a quick way to switch between the available dictionaries if spell checking is enabled. Via right click, get immediately a list of available dictionaries at the bottom of the popup menu. Do not put these in a separate submenu in order to switch dictionaries quickly. This is stored the same setting as the setting in Preferences. 4) Later on, implement a default dictionary as above and a per contact or room dictionary setting that is stored separately. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to empathy in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/445863 Title: Spell checking doesn't allow US English words when using "English" language Status in Chat app, and Telepathy user interface: Confirmed Status in One Hundred Papercuts: Triaged Status in “empathy” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “empathy” source package in Lucid: Triaged Bug description: Binary package hint: empathy When I have "English" selected for the spell checking language under Edit > Preferences > Spell Checking, US English spellings of words (e.g., "favorite", "behavior", and "analyze"), are marked as incorrect and their GB English counterparts (e.g., "favourite", "behaviour", and "analyse") are suggested instead. I make Empathy recognize US English words locally by using gconf-editor to change the relevant entry at the path below from "en" to "en-US" and restarting Empathy. /apps/empathy/conversation/spell_checker_languages There are two better fixes I can see for this: (1) Break out the general "English" into the different dialects, e.g, one entry for "English (GB)", another for "English (US)", another for "English (ZA)", etc. I believe this to be the best of available options. (2) Use the entry "English" as a "composite" option, which would actually add all en-* dialects to the spell checker. This could potentially be a problem with other languages with major dialects, such as Chinese (zh-cn and zh-tw), but I have not verified this. It should be noted that my system was installed with US English with no other languages or dialects installed. ProblemType: Bug Architecture: amd64 CheckboxSubmission: eccee3ffef08eb96dd59ef8dfc7812c8 CheckboxSystem: 36acc479c47ece291c12af9d42b8b11e Date: Wed Oct 7 18:15:59 2009 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10 Package: empathy 2.28.0.1-1ubuntu2 ProcEnviron: PATH=(custom, user) LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.40-generic SourcePackage: empathy Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic x86_64 XsessionErrors: (gnome-settings-daemon:5757): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:5835): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed (nautilus:5822): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed (gnome-panel:5821): Gtk-WARNING **: gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -5 and height 24 (gnome-panel:5821): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_event: assertion `WIDGET_REALIZED_FOR_EVENT (widget, event)' failed To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/empathy/+bug/445863/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp