API for spell checking

[bordaigorl]

Problem description

There is currently no API to control/interact with the spell checker. It is impossible, for example, to obtain a list of suggested changes, obtain a list of the spelling errors, apply a suggestion. Possible use cases:

• a plug-in that when pressing TAB after a word classified as a spelling mistake, would cycle through the suggestions.
• a plug-in that uses a quick panel to display the suggestions instead of a context menu, showing the selected suggestion's definitions as a preview in a temporary panel below.
• a macro to apply blindly all suggestions

Preferred solution

An API exposing the basic spellchecker functions.

Ideally:

• view.spelling() returns a Spelling object
• Spelling.mistakes() returns list of regions
• Spelling.check(region) returns list of suggestions
• Spelling.set/get_dictionary(...)
• Spelling.on_suggestion_accepted event (just before suggestion is applied)
• Could mirror Python's Hunspell bindings

Optionally, spell checking functionality could be provided independently of views, i.e. sublime.spellchecker() returns an instance of Spellchecker with API like Spellchecker.config(dict), Spellchecker.check(text) etc..

[Thom1729]

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't Sublime just use the system's spellcheck?

[bordaigorl]

From the docs:

Sublime Text uses Hunspell for its spell checking support.

That's the only official statement on this I could find...

Also from the same docs:

Commands

• next_misspelling: Select the next misspelling
• prev_misspelling: Select the previous misspelling
• add_word: Adds the word given by the word argument to the add list
• ignore_word: Adds the word given by the word argument to the ignore list

which offers a rather limited interface.

[timfjord]

Was about to request the same thing. It would be really good to have something like that in place as currently there is no way to pick a spell check suggestion rather than using a mouse/trackpad which is very inconvenient