Spell checking doesn't allow US English words when using "English" language
Submitted by Kevin Sumner
Link to original bug (#598958)
Description
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.
I am using Empathy on an Ubuntu 9.10 desktop on an x86-64 system. I originally filed this bug with the Ubuntu team and they have indicated that it would be better filed upstream. You can find the original bug report here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/445863
Version: 2.29.x