Current problem is that this might be a bit too much to add spell checking on every TextArea in QML/Kirigami, so qqc2-desktop-style might not be the right place for this.

Current alternatives are:

1. Adding a Kirigami.TextArea with a context menu and port apps to use it. In Kirigami Addons, extends Kirigami.TextArea and add the Sonnet integration. This would allow for apps to opt-in into this feature but also means we would need to replace every QQC2.textArea with either Kirigami.TextArea or KirigamiAddons.SpellcheckedTextArea :(
2. Doing things with input methods, but this will need to make changes in Qt to expose the QTextDocument to Input Methods otherwise we won't get syntax highlighting
3. Doing things as I did in NeoChat and copy the TextArea from qqc2-desktop-style and extend it with spellchecking. Work for now and make users happy but this is not a long-term solution.

What's the problem that we are facing that we need to copy textArea? You probably encountered some issue that makes just adding the spellchecker ( which would also provide the menu ) to the textarea/input not feasible?

In T14162#257721, @davidre wrote:

What's the problem that we are facing that we need to copy textArea? You probably encountered some issue that makes just adding the spellchecker ( which would also provide the menu ) to the textarea/input not feasible?

The problem is that it could theoretically break applications. For example, a text editor already has its own syntax highlighting and adding the one from Sonnet on top won't work.

Oh I think we are thinking of different things. I think during the spring the idea was to provide a object that one could use in order to opt into spell checking

TextArea {
  SonnetHighlighter {
      target: TextArea
  }
}

Or something like that.

In T14162#257765, @davidre wrote:

Oh I think we are thinking of different things. I think during the spring the idea was to provide a object that one could use in order to opt into spell checking

TextArea {
  SonnetHighlighter {
      target: TextArea
  }
}

Or something like that.

The problem with that is that for the suggestions we would need to access the context menu from qqc2-desktop-style to add a few more entry items. We could depends on qqc2-desktop-style and do hacky things to make it work, but we would then loose the ability to switch the qqc2 style for android and plasma mobile :(

For android we likely want to use the system spellchecking or do we also want sonnet there?

Maybe we can do it the other way around then:

• our Highlighter /has/ to be the parent
• qqc2-desktop-style can look for the Highlighter in the children and integrate the suggestions into its own menu
• with other styles SonnetHighlighter shows its own menu

Different behavior per style could be implemented with file selectors
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquickcontrols2-fileselectors.html

Another option would be to add a new input method hint to Qt so that we can still use a simple TextArea and get SyntaxHighlighting just by adding the hint. This would also make it easier to ifdef sonnet from the Android build for example.

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtquick-textinput.html#inputMethodHints-prop

Draft MR for sonnet: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/sonnet/-/merge_requests/25

Ok this is now mostly done! 🎉

• The MR in Sonnet create declarative bindings: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/sonnet/-/merge_requests/25
• The MR in Kirigami create an attached property to give a hint about enabling/disabling spellchecking https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/-/merge_requests/329
• The MR in qqc2-desktop-style gives a default implementation: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/qqc2-desktop-style/-/merge_requests/74
• The MR in NeoChat use all this to create a Setting page for spellchecking and enable spellchecking https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat/-/merge_requests/297

Ping, who is up to review it? :)

Merged :D