TranslatingOpie

If you are willing to translate Opie into your native language, you should:

1. Check if your language is already supported in the latest development version. Get the latest Source code from git and check the i18n/ directory for your language's two-letter code. The current status should also be reflected on the OpieTranslationProject page (currently out of date). If your language is not included in latest development sources you could start translation for your language.

2. Contact the developers, in case there is some unofficial work done already.

3. If you are sure there's nobody else working on this language, you can choose to become the language's maintainer. Your job as a maintainer will be to coordinate the work from other contributors and make sure there's no duplicated efforts. Individual contributors should check with the language's maintainer before doing any work.

4. Once you've done all of the above, get the translation tool and begin working:


 * Qt Linguist - most likely already included with your distribution, in the package named something like qt3-devel-tools
 * KBabel - included with KDE3, in the package kdesdk
 * Or simply a UTF8-capable editor, if you prefer to edit *.ts files manually. Their format should be self-explanatory.

5. When you're done with changes, either use  to create a patch, or request one of the other developers to merge from your source tree (if you use Github).

The translation sources are located in the *.ts files. *.qm files are generated during the Opie build process and should NOT be committed to git. *.ts files are to be updated by the Opie Translation Leader, or whoever volunteers, after informing the rest of developers at least 2 days before the update.

Another part that needs to be translated is the *.desktop and .directory files, found in the apps/ directory. They contain the application names as they appear in Launcher and comments to them. Simply use your favorite editor and don't forget to save your work in UTF8.

Creating a new language entry:
[Desktop Entry] Name=Language-name-in-English Name[xx]=Test-language-native-name
 * Add the i18n/xx directory, where xx is your language's two-letter code.
 * Add the opie-i18n-xx.control file to the i18n/ directory. Look at the existing files for examples.
 * Create .directory file in i18n/xx that looks like this:


 * You can also create a .gitignore file if you want to skip the *.qm files when committing/updating:
 * .qm


 * Finally, add the *.ts files themselves.

Misc notes:


 * Do not mark a phrase as completed unless you are sure that you have the correct translation (though you can edit it later if you find mistakes)
 * You can use  and   scripts to see the progress on each language.

TODO: opie-lupdate, detailed instructions for git (on a separate page?)