[Spambayes] Spambayes - a few more steps forward in Czech in plugin 0081

[Erik Piper]

Dear SpamBayes team,

I'm the fellow who was working in a Czech environment, ran into SpamBayes
crashing and burning on Czech characters, started asking questions on the
list, and eventually stopped asking (too frustrated and too embarrassed at
my ignorance within Python, though I still apologize for the unannounced
disappearance). Today I downloaded version 8 of the plugin, first at work
and at home, and found somewhat more promising, but still not perfect,
results.

Work computer (W98SE CZ, Outlook 2K CZ): ABSOLUTELY no problems at ALL.

Home computer (W2K CZ, Outlook 2K CZ): Installation fine, startup fine. But:
1. clicking the Data Folder button in the Advanced tab leads to an error
dialog:
SpamBayes
	'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xed' in position 52: ordinal not in
range(128)

In the old discussions on this matter, the SpamBayes team noted that the
guilty character (and this here seems to be the same one) was an accented i,
which is contained in the Application Data folder in Czech Windows 2000.
(I'm not sure about Win98 SE; it may have an unlocalized app. data folder
name.)

2. When running Spambayes' Configuration Wizard using the "I have sorted..."
option (though NOT when using the other two options), the same error message
as mentioned above appears after the last step of the wizard is complete,
i.e. just before jumping back into the SpamBayes manager's main dialog.

3. Attempts to use the Training tab to train SpamBayes based on designated
spam/ham folders soft-hang during the "Saving: Writing to Database..." step.
By "soft-hang," I mean that Outlook does not become hung, but the "Saving:
Writing to database..." message remains until you switch tabs/close the
dialog, and more importantly, a check of the Training database status after
the training reveals no change to the sizes of the trained-ham and
trained-spam counts. It sounds to me, as a layman, as if SpamBayes is having
trouble getting to its own database due to problem 1 above.

4. The "Delete as Spam" and "Recover from "Spam" buttons have no effect.

Interestingly, I have somehow managed to get 32 messages trained as ham, or
so the Training Database Status tells me. Probably in the course of moving
things about during setup, before I discovered that SpamBayes was not
working as well as I had thought.

I know you've solved a lot of problems related to Unicode so far; hopefully
you'll be able to resolve this one as well. As usual I am available for
testing. Though the mere thought of messing around with actual python
scripts again makes my head spin, there's no end to what I'd do in the name
of science. I guess.

Cheers and thanks in advance,

Erik Piper