Proposal: Add Integrated Spell Checker to the Spyder IDE

[tvjjerome]

Summary

This proposal suggests adding an integrated spell-checking feature to the Spyder IDE. The goal is to provide real-time detection of spelling errors in comments, docstrings, and plain-text files using Spyder’s existing diagnostics and editor infrastructure. This addition would improve readability, documentation quality, and overall user experience.

Motivation

Spyder currently lacks built-in spell-checking, despite code containing:

• documentation within docstrings
• explanatory comments
• descriptive variable explanations

These text elements benefit from basic spell validation. Mistakes can reduce clarity and negatively affect documentation or educational use.

An integrated spell checker would help users write cleaner, more readable code without switching editors.

Proposed Functionality

1. Real-time spell checking

• Highlights misspelled words in the editor
• Uses Spyder’s diagnostics to display underlines and messages

2. Configurable dictionaries

• Support for common languages (English provided first, with additional languages planned for later)
• Option to load a user-maintained custom dictionary

3. Selective scope

• Spell checking focused on comments and docstrings
• Optional support for plain-text or Markdown files within the editor

4. User-accessible settings

• Enable or disable spell checking
• Select dictionary language
• Define a custom word list

Interest in Contributing

I would like to work on this feature and contribute to the implementation. Before beginning development, I am requesting confirmation from the maintainers that this proposal aligns with Spyder’s roadmap, along with any preferred guidelines for architecture, plugin structure, or integration details.