Okay 0.5.8 is out...so a few notes on the changed spellchecker.
The installing instructions for the dictionary didn't change:
First you will need a dictionary. You can use the openOffice.org dicts for that. Either get one here or just use the en_US one. Now go in your PlaneShift installation directory to the "data" directory and create a new "dict" folder. In that new folder unzip the dictionary (spellchecker looks for planeshift/data/dict/<dict>.dic and planeshift/data/dict/<dict>.aff).
No need anymore to edit any config files as the spellchecker got a config gui in game now.
The real important change (for users) is that it now works for every "pawsEditTextBox" and "pawsMultilineEditTextBox". But by default it's turned off for any of those. In the default skin spellchecking is only done for the chat window input box and for books (title and text). But it's really no problem to have char description, quest notes, private and public notes in guild and a lot more spellchecked as well. Giving an example for the char description here...but works the same for almost everything else (And this is for the default elves skin...for other skins you have to edit the files contained in that skin):
First you need to find the xml file that defines the gui for the char description. That's not that hard...just go to "<planeshift-install-dir>/data/gui". In that folder is a file called "chardescwindow.xml". Open that file in your preferred text editor:
vim chardescwindow.xml
Now you have to find the part that defines the Edit box for editing the char description. Again not very hard as there is only one EditBox in this file...just search for "pawsMultilineEditTextBox". You should find a part looking like this:
...
<pawsMultilineEditTextBox name="Description">
<frame x="25" y="30" width="270" height="185" border="no" />
<attachpoints>
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_RIGHT" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_TOP" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_LEFT" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_BOTTOM" />
</attachpoints>
</pawsMultilineEditTextBox>
...
Now all you have to do is add a "<spellChecker enable="true" r="255" g="0" b="0"/>" line to that "pawsMultilineEditTextBox" so it looks like this (position doesn't matter...could as well be put as the first line under <pawsMultilineEditTextBox>:
...
<pawsMultilineEditTextBox name="Description">
<frame x="25" y="30" width="270" height="185" border="no" />
<attachpoints>
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_RIGHT" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_TOP" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_LEFT" />
<attach point="PROPORTIONAL_BOTTOM" />
</attachpoints>
<spellChecker enable="true" r="255" g="0" b="0"/>
</pawsMultilineEditTextBox>
...
The "enable" in that line turns on the spellchecker. In case you only want to turn it off but keep that line for easier changing it later again just set it to "false". The "r", "g," and "b" values define the color of the typos (range 0-255). In the example I simply use red (Use
http://www.colorpicker.com/ to figuring out what values you want). That's about it.
Oh..and of course the spellchecker is only used in case it's available. It's no problem to turn it on in the xml files even on the windows client which doesn't have it...it just doesn't change anything then. Same if no dictionary could be found...the widget will just act as if the spellchecker is turned off.
A last notice on the gui.xml files. The pawsEditTextBox and pawsMultilineEditTextBox come in two versions there: "<pawsMultilineEditTextBox name="Description">" as in the example or "<widget name="body" factory="pawsMultilineEditTextBox" style="textinput">" (example for that in "bookwriting.xml"). For the spellchecker that makes no difference. Just add the one line and fine.
Further infos in
http://bugs.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?task_id=4922.