[Mailman-Users] Internationalization (was Reply-problems)

[The List Server Administrator at UNH]

    arety at dolphinics.no recently posted regarding non-english versions of
    "RE:' in the subject line:

> ... [S]ome users have strange mailers which
> replies with 'Ad: ' or 'SV: ' instead of 'Re: '. Mailman is good in not
> adding [listname] on replies, as long they use the 'Re: '. Is there any
> way of adding support for 'Ad: ', 'SV: ' or anything like that?

    Harald Meland <Harald.Meland at usit.uio.no> observed:

> I don't think so -- these are the much hated "internationalized" reply
> subject prefixes some MUA vendors decided their users needed.
> 
> As there are quite a lot of different languages out there, and as
> trying to be smart about these prefixes sooner or later will backfire...

    I agree that trying to build this into the server would not be
    a good idea.  But I do think this would be a good thing to add to
    the list of "internationalization features" for future version.  Just
    as a Spanish speaking site should be able to change all of the 
    Mailman messages and text to meet local requirements, recognition of
    things such as "RE:" detection could be parameterized so that the
    local site could change it as they feel appropriate.

    Actually something that is relatively easy to do with ListProc is
    to change the default system welcome message sent out on a
    list-per-list basis.  I'm not talking about the list owner welcome,
    but rather the generic welcome maintained by the site admin.  It
    thus is a simple matter to identify a given list as being a "Spanish
    Language" list, and thus have a different global welcome file be
    used.  (Unfortunately the ListProc messages themselves are hardcoded.)

    My point is, it might be worthwhile to have localization be
    configurable on a list-by-list basis since I have seen list server
    sites that support both English and Spanish language lists on the
    same server.


                                           Cordially,
                                           The List Server Admin
                                           list.admin at unh.edu
                                           (currently Bill Costa)