Feedback on multilingual typing

[Helium314]

Despite being a much requested feature, there hasn't been any feedback on multilingual typing, which is available in the experimental section of advanced settings.

I hope to move it out of the experimental section into a reworked language / dictionary settings section (which should also fix #12).
But before declaring this feature non-experimental, I would like some feedback / comments, especially how well the switching between the languages work, and whether it works reasonably well for non-latin scripts (e.g Cyrillic).

[BlackyHawky]

First of all, in my opinion, this feature is one of the most interesting.

From what I understand, this functionality depends on the frequency of use of the words defined in the .dict files. Is that the case ?
If so, is it possible that the suggestion in the middle makes the primary language appear first?

For example, in French, we often use the word "il" or "un" and it is impossible to choose them because it is proposed instead "I'll" and "In" in English.
In the suggestions popup, these 2 French words also do not appear.

If that's not possible, maybe I need to modify the fr_wordlist.combined file and recreate a dictionary...

[BlackyHawky]

So if you previously entered a few words that exist only in French, but not in English, French words should be clearly preferred in suggestions.

I'm finally taking the time to reply to this message.

I have consulted the files "en_GB_worldlist.combined" and "en_US_worldlist.combined".

The French word "il" exists like this:
word=il,f=0,not_a_word=true
shortcut=I'll,f=whitelist

The French word "un" exists like this:
word=un,f=0,not_a_word=true
shortcut=in,f=whitelist

Is this why both are not suggested?

I think it would be better to instead tune the way the weights are determined.

Unfortunately, I'm not competent enough to change the way the weight is determined.

[Helium314]

Is this why both are not suggested?

Probably that's the reason. Actually it shouldn't be the job of a dictionary to correct common typos...
Does it also happen with the experimental dictionaries?

[BlackyHawky]

I tested and here are the results:
Tests were performed with a fresh installation and with the following options enabled:

 Self-correction → toggle on
 Self-correction confidence → very aggressive

• With only the French experimental dictionary, same bad behavior: the words "il" and "un" are never suggested and I can't write them;
  

• With only US English Experimental Dictionary, the words "il" and "un" are never suggested but I can write them;
  

• With the two experimental dictionaries, same behavior as above: the words "il" and "un" are never suggested but I can write them.

[Helium314]

That's strange, actually "un" has a higher frequency in the French dictionary than "UN" has in the English one. So I would expect "un" to be preferred.
Currently no idea where things go wrong (except that it's not in the dictionaries), but this should not happen.

Could you open a bug issue about this?

[BlackyHawky]

Bug issue #71 created.

[BlackyHawky]

While doing tests I realized a possible bug:
If you define a custom style in the appearance menu, example: US English language with keyboard AZERTY, you can no longer choose a secondary dictionary for this language.

[Helium314]

Thanks for finding!
It's not worth fixing because language settings will change anyway (#50), but will be considered in the new settings.

[BlackyHawky]

Thanks to your commit f323953, you can close this thread (I don't know if it's possible to keep the top one open by doing this).
In any case, thank you because it's working very well now.

[Helium314]

I had actually hoped that "needs improvement" and "not working" voters would leave a comment so I can improve things, but whatever.
As I don't plan on doing more work on multilingual typing other than some fine-tuning, I'll close this (seems to be working fine for most users anyway).