Cannot set default language for spell-checking
I currently have three dictionaries installed on Firefox (English (US), Hungarian and French). I use all three languages, so I do not want to delete any of them. However, I use English most of the time, so i would like this to be the default language. However, whenever I start typing, the spellchecker reverts to French, and i have to reset this manually every time I want to use English. i can't work out why "French" has become the default (it was the last of the dictionaries I installed). Does anybody know how I can set English to be the default?
All Replies (6)
- Right-click in the text box
- Select Languages, then select a language for spell checker
Thanks for the reply.
However I know I can do this (this is how I change between dictionaries all the time). But, as I said in my original post, the default dictionary (i.e. the one which is selected if I do not actively select a dictionary by right-clicking and selecting) is always French. I would like the default to be English. Do you know or does anyone else know how to set this?
What is the value of the spellchecker.dictionary pref on the about:config page?
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.
Hi Cor-el
Well, I think you've found where the problem lies - thank you for that. This setting is set to "fr-reform" which explains why the default spellchecker language is always "French (reform)". Now all I need to do is find out the exact string to which I need to set in this parameter that corresponds to English (United States). Do you know what the value should be, or even better, where I can find the correspondence between the labels displayed in the "Languages" box which appears when I right-click in the window, and the strings values which can be set in the config file?
Regards John
Well, I found the value I need to set: "en-US". However, for some reason even after I set this value, the next time I start Firefox, the spellchecker dictionary somehow reverts to "fr-reform" even if I do not select anything, and so I have to change it back to en-US manually each time. Obviously "fr-reform" must be set as a default somewhere else (and not in about:config).
Is there any way of editing this default value?
You can consider to use the user.js file in the profile folder to set the spellchecker.dictionary pref to a predefined value.
user_pref("spellchecker.dictionary", "en-US");
The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.