[Mailman-Developers] suggestions for i18n

John Read john.read@newnet-marketing.de
Fri, 26 Jan 2001 15:01:43 +0100


I suggested to Juan last week, who correctly said that I should mention it
here, that it would be a great advantage for mailservers with different
types of lists which require not only different languages but also different
style of messages per list, if the message could be defined per list.

I have a suggestion how this can be done very easily. If the function
maketext (in Utils) had an addition parameter "list", it could first try to
open the text file in mailman/list/"listname"/"lang". If the file is not
there, then it could continue to take it from /mailman/templates/"lang" as
you have coded it. This would mean that if the list manager wanted to put
special messages in a list he can create them in the
list/"listname"/"lang"/....... directory. The normal list manager would not
notice any difference.

This would be a great feature for us here as we have very different styles
of lists which need deferent "tone" of messages.



I have another question. In the v2.1 expected functions, you have listed the
function to enter the full name. This leads onto a completely new set of
possibilities with links into databases, and personalised mailings, etc. I
can imagine that all these possibilities are too complex to fit into one
program (mailman), but what about an simple API where the completed email
(with associated data) could be presented to another application for further
processing, eg filling fields in the email from a db. Applications could
then designed separately by other groups, and slotted in required by the
list managers.

I could certainly help doing some coding.

regards
--
John Read
NewNet Marketing
Waldweg 15
83558 Maitenbeth
Tel: +49-8076-8879818
Fax: +49-8076-8879819