With the Sonnet library for KDE 4, developer Jacob Rideout hopes to reinvigorate the field of desktop linguistics by adding automatic language detection and other innovative features. Sonnet is to be for KDE 4 what KSpell 2 is for the current version of the K Desktop Environment, providing spell-checking facilities to applications as diverse as the Konqueror Web browser, Kopete instant messenger, and KWord office software. Unlike KSpell, however, it will also provide grammar checking, multilingual tools, and perhaps even translation, dictionary, and thesaurus functionality across all of KDE.
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Member since:2006-06-04
Member since:2005-07-02
Member since:2007-02-05
The coding isn't in as early a stage as you might think. Language detection and spell checking are up and running in sonnet, and they both work in background threads to optimize performance. Here's a link to an article from the developer (with a screenshot even):
http://blog.jacobrideout.net/2007/01/language-detection-works.html
Also, just today Decibel (the communications framework) 0.2 was released. It's feature complete and (from what I understand) the main things left to be done are integrating it with the other kde4 technologies. The release announcement is here:
http://basysblog.org/index.php/archives/decibel-020-a-pillar-of-kde...
Member since:2006-02-01
In fact the many KDE4 libraries projects are at a pretty much advanced stage in code. Now what is lacking most for this libraries is polishing, and determining what is wrong in the API to insure its stability over the KDE4 lifetime.
But, the integration in applications is lacking, and that might not happen in 4.0, and that will probably not be finish before 4.3. And that's only reason to hold your breath 
Having a good technology doesn't mean it will be used by all immediately.
Member since:2005-07-06
> are all concepts for now
so we've had articles showing the current working state of phonon, sonnet, advancements in various apps (sysguard, games) etc .. in the last month or two and you still think they are just conceptual? hum. well, the code is in svn and its at the state where people who like to write about these things can actually build it and show it in action. to me that's a bit beyond conceptual =)
Member since:
2005-07-02
I write in both english and french, and I like the idea of Sonnet determining which language I'm using on-the-fly.
System-wide spellchecking, thesaurus, grammar-checking and (one day) translation is a *big* plus for KDE. KDE 4 is looking more and more like the "killer desktop" everyday!