Bug 105527 - [Bounty] Improve readability of grammar and spelling errors
Summary: [Bounty] Improve readability of grammar and spelling errors
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2017-01-25 17:04 UTC by Olivier R.
Modified: 2022-11-30 05:40 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
error readability tests (179.32 KB, image/png)
2017-01-25 17:05 UTC, Olivier R.
Details

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Description Olivier R. 2017-01-25 17:04:04 UTC
Description:
This is a feature request to improve readability of grammar and spelling mistakes.

Steps to Reproduce:
Spelling and grammar errors are at this moment underlined with a thin wavy blue line (only one pixel width).

It’s difficult to detect errors in a text with such a thin line, especially with one-letter word.

If you type: “Il à faim” in French, with the grammar checker Grammalecte, the word “à” is not correct and is underlined with a thin line that is not easy to see.

We should underline errors with a thicker line: 2 or 3 pixels width instead of 1. I also think straight lines are much cleaner than wavy lines. 

A grammar checker can report a lot of different grammar errors, and typographical errors, and stylistic errors. But all these mistakes are underlined with a thin wavy blue line.

Grammar checkers should be allowed to set the color of the errors they create. LibreOffice should add an attribute the SingleProofreadingError structure. This attribute could be named nColor or something similar.

http://api.libreoffice.org/docs/idl/ref/structcom_1_1sun_1_1star_1_1linguistic2_1_1SingleProofreadingError.html


So, to sum up this request, we should:
— thicken underlines, let users choose the width and the kind (wavy or straight) of lines they want,
— let grammar checkers change the color of errors they report to LO.

I created a file with different possible underlinings.

Actual Results:  
Please look at the attached file.

Expected Results:
Please look at the attached file.


Reproducible: Always

User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:51.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/51.0
Comment 1 Olivier R. 2017-01-25 17:05:18 UTC
Created attachment 130677 [details]
error readability tests
Comment 2 tommy27 2017-01-26 09:38:17 UTC
enhancement request. status NEW.

I agree to introduce an option to set the thickness of wavy lines.
an option to let the user have wavy or straight lines would be ok as well. 
both things could be easy hacks.

regarding the different colors fordifferent kind of mistakes that seem more complex to do, but I would have no objections if someone wants to implement it.
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2017-02-06 10:03:05 UTC
In bug 105663 we discuss the idea of having a list of spelling findings in the sidebar. I believe this would be the better solution here as well since accessibility is not ultimately solved with thicker lines. And offering options for each and every feature clutters the configuration. So would you agree with this solution? 

(PS: Ignore the question how where exactly those infos would be shown.)
Comment 4 Olivier R. 2017-02-07 14:59:20 UTC
No. This is not the same matter.
Here, the issue is about readability. Why tracking mistakes should lower our expectations for readability?

Different colors give information about mistakes. That’s useful.

If having another option is really what bothers you, we should nevertheless change the underlining to 3-pixels-full-straight lines.
Comment 5 tommy27 2017-02-07 15:26:48 UTC
I'd like to have an "expert configuration" setting where to select the thickness of the red/blue wavy line.

people who like the current 1-pixel thickness line could leave the current setting.

other people would instead like to raise it to 2 or even 3
Comment 6 Olivier R. 2017-05-24 15:48:37 UTC
There is a bounty of $350 for solving this issue:
https://www.bountysource.com/issues/44906435-improve-readability-of-grammar-and-spelling-errors
Comment 7 Olivier R. 2018-06-07 09:11:45 UTC
Half the job has been done:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=7e428cac54c0a10aa7885923b836562e8fa82235
It’s now possible to define a color to grammar errors.
Comment 8 Jason White 2019-08-14 15:38:42 UTC
+1 for this. This bug still has a $350 bounty, someone ought to finish the job and collect on it.
Comment 9 Olivier R. 2020-06-05 15:52:24 UTC
Bug fixed one year ago.
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=cdd69ce780dc7758047a27ed3c76bdc01b5ffb89
Sorry, I forgot to close the bug.
Comment 10 mir.einer 2022-11-29 20:43:42 UTC
These days, more and more people using 4K monitors, because they have become very affordable.
But in LibreOffice Writer the underlines for spelling and grammar errors of Hunspell and LanguageTool are very hard to see on 4K monitors, because they are only one point thick.
PLEASE increase the thickness of the underlines automatically if LibreOffice Writer is running on 4K graphics. Or even better, add an option to let the user choose the thickness of the underlines.
Thank you very much!
Comment 11 Heiko Tietze 2022-11-30 05:40:43 UTC
(In reply to mir.einer from comment #10)
> But in LibreOffice Writer the underlines for spelling and grammar errors of
> Hunspell and LanguageTool are very hard to see on 4K monitors...

Olivier implemented the BOLDWAVE line style some years ago. If you think it's not sufficient please file a new ticket with details about program version and OS, desktop settings etc. Please also attach a screenshot.