[Scribus] Spell checking

[Gora Mohanty]

Hi,
  Thanks to help from Petr, and others, I have managed to get started on
a spell-checker plugin using aspell. Here are several questions related
to the workflow for such a plugin, at least some of which are because of
my unfamiliarity with Scribus, and DTP software:
1. Plugins, and modal dialogs: I notice that all the plugins in Scribus
   1.3.4 CVS seem to bring up modal dialogs. I do not think that this is
   a good idea for a spell-checking plugin, as the user needs to choose
   a language, and an encoding for the aspell dictionary, and there
   would be some setup involved with aspell. Ideally, what I would like
   is to do this aspell initialisation once, the first time the plugin
   is loaded. Thus, the first time the plugin is loaded, the user would
   get a pop-up dialog box, listing the available aspell dictionaries,
   and allowing the user to choose one. On clicking OK, three menu items
   would be added (see the discussion on this in the next point), which
   would allow the user to continue spell-checking at a later point of
   time. Alternatively, it is possible to use a modal dialog, and
   initialise aspell each time. Which strategy would be preferable?

2. Spell-checking menu items: I am not sure where to add these, but am
   considering (a) at the top of the Extras menu, or (b) in a sub-menu
   under Extras > Aspell. I envisage three menu items: (a) Check
   Spelling, which operates a word at a time on selected text, (b)
   Autocheck Spelling, which checks every word in the current
   selection (I am not sure what this would mean in the context of
   Scribus, but probably something like a frame, or a page), and
   highlights mis-spelled words, e.g., by underlining them with a
   squiggly red line. (c) Choose Language / Settings which allows the
   user to reset some aspell parameters, such as the dictionary in
   use, on the fly. This is almost exactly a copy of the gedit
   interface, under the Tools menu.

Regards,
Gora

P.S. I will also come and hang out on #scribus when I can.