Bug 149535 - Add highlighting (background color) to options for marking misspelled words in the spelling checker
Summary: Add highlighting (background color) to options for marking misspelled words i...
Status: NEEDINFO
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: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/change-...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks: Spell-Checking a11y, Accessibility Options-Dialog
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2022-06-12 19:03 UTC by [REDACTED]
Modified: 2026-01-22 12:03 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Mock-up of suggestion (3.54 KB, image/png)
2026-01-01 16:13 UTC, Stephen
Details
Mock-up of suggestion (3.54 KB, image/png)
2026-01-01 16:16 UTC, Stephen
Details
Screenshot of the dialog with dark theme and the gtk3 VCL plugin (Linux) (33.76 KB, image/png)
2026-01-22 12:00 UTC, Michael Weghorn
Details

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Description [REDACTED] 2022-06-12 19:03:21 UTC
This was brought up in the topic https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/change-wavy-line-to-text-highlight-during-spell-grammar-check/78483/3 in The Ask site. Some visually impaired people have trouble with wavy underlining and would be happy with a colored background. So - could you add an option to highlight text instead of wavy underlining it?
Comment 1 Rafael Lima 2022-06-14 15:11:27 UTC
Sounds a good idea to me. Let's hear from the UX team.
Comment 2 Heiko Tietze 2022-06-15 09:26:12 UTC
Could be an option similar to what we have for track changes (tools > options > writer > changes). Objection to another rather complex option?
Comment 3 Rafael Lima 2022-06-15 14:58:53 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #2)
> Could be an option similar to what we have for track changes (tools >
> options > writer > changes). Objection to another rather complex option?

IMO this is a good idea. The new options dialog should be under Tool - Options - LibreOffice - Language Settings, so that it is applicable to all LO applications.

Heiko, we should also give the option to keep the existing behavior (wavy red / blue lines).

Also, the dialog you gave as example allows to define the text "Attributes" and text "Color", but it would be nice to have a "Background color" as well, so that the highlighted text stands out even more. This way we could have an implementation closer to what was suggested in the ask.libreoffice link (see Comment #0), which looks nice IMO.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2022-06-17 08:45:28 UTC
(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #3)
> Heiko, we should also give the option to keep the existing behavior (wavy
> red / blue lines).

Yes, this attribute needs to be added to have it as default.
Comment 5 michelwoody433 2025-12-05 11:55:14 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 6 Stephen 2026-01-01 16:13:28 UTC
Created attachment 204894 [details]
Mock-up of suggestion
Comment 7 Stephen 2026-01-01 16:16:29 UTC
Created attachment 204895 [details]
Mock-up of suggestion

+1

The wavy line is not easy to see (on 2 Windows laptops I have tried), Maybe it is a combination of anti-aliasing and 125% scaling.

A configurable background colour would help a lot. Attached is a  mock-up: default, different colour, background colour.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2026-01-02 07:58:57 UTC
Couple of years has passed since was reported. The issue is that highlighting or other formatting potentially clashes with the wavy underlines for spell-checking. But this might also happen for other attributes and the only way to be absolute sure not to miss spell-check errors is to use the dialog. For other purposes we provide customization of the red color (Tools > Options > Appearance > Customization: Spelling mistakes).

My take is now WF (or dup of bug 47848) but I leave this for a11y.
Comment 9 gailand 2026-01-02 10:47:22 UTC
The issue is present in said dialog.  It is just as challenging when looking for a misplaced apostrophe or an addditional letter in the paragraph that is returned.  For the purposes of highlighting, a lighter orange color should be used instead of red.  The color red tends to blend into the background of black and does not initially present any form of significance.
Comment 10 Michael Weghorn 2026-01-22 12:00:45 UTC
Created attachment 205132 [details]
Screenshot of the dialog with dark theme and the gtk3 VCL plugin (Linux)
Comment 11 Michael Weghorn 2026-01-22 12:03:43 UTC
(In reply to gailand from comment #9)
> The issue is present in said dialog.  It is just as challenging when looking
> for a misplaced apostrophe or an addditional letter in the paragraph that is
> returned.  For the purposes of highlighting, a lighter orange color should
> be used instead of red.  The color red tends to blend into the background of
> black and does not initially present any form of significance.

Having a low contrast between background and font color sounds bad.

I quickly tested this with a dark theme on Linux with both, the gtk3 and qt6 VCL plugins. For both of them, the background color remains white even with a dark theme. (attachment 205132 [details] is a screenshot for the gtk3 case.)

Can you please attach a screenshot of what it looks like for you? What operating system and theme/style are you using?

Version: 26.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64)
Build ID: 6b3b9a2a2dfc0588e368b64bb4c86d246ec012a0
CPU threads: 32; OS: Linux 6.17; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded