[Mailman-Users] Changing preferred language for all users

[Jolin M Warren]

Hello Jim,

At 11:29 on 11-7-04, Jim Tittsler wrote:
>  bin/withlist is the tool for making arbitrary changes to
>  mailing list objects.  You can write functions for things
>  you expect to do frequently, or use it interactively with
>  the full power of Python to do one off changes.

I had a feeling that this was what I needed to use. My problem is 
that I've never used Python before, so wasn't quite sure where to 
start.

At 11:29 on 11-7-04, Jim Tittsler wrote:
>  Mailman/MemberAdapter.py is the best source for documentation
>  on manipulating members and their preferences.

Thanks for the pointer, I will use that in the future when trying to 
work out how to use 'withlist' -- I can see that I need to learn how 
to use it because it looks quite flexible. In the meantime, I really 
appreciate your sending me the code I need to change the language of 
all members of a list. That is exactly what I needed!

Something that is interesting, though is that the code you sent 
allows me to set the members' language to anything -- i.e. I can set 
them to any  valid language code, but also to a meaningless one like 
'japa'. If, for instance, I switch the members to 'ja' without 
Japanese being enabled on the list, there is no error given. When I 
do a 'dumpdb' on the list, the users are listed as:

     'language': {   'user1 at oakandapple.org': 'ja',
                     'user2 at oakandapple.org': 'ja'},

However, in the web admin interface, they still show up with their 
language set to 'English' (as that is the only one supported on the 
list). If I then go and enable 'Japanese' for the list, when I go 
back to the members page, they show up with their language set to 
Japanese. If I use 'withlist' to set the members' language to 
something invalid like, 'japa', on the members admin page, their 
language just shows up as the list's default language (even though a 
'dumpdb' reveals that internally they are set to 'japa'). So it looks 
like you can set members to use any 'language' and they will just 
fall back to the default. But then if the language code (if it 
exists) is subsequently enabled, they automatically switch over. 
Could be useful, but I don't know if this is a bug or a feature. :-)

Thanks so much for your help.

Cheers,
Jolin