Developer Area/User manual translation

The Mahara user manual is written in rST markup and uses Sphinx to build the documentation.

Various repositories:

• repository for the text and the English images: https://gitorious.org/mahara/manual
• repository for the translated screenshots: https://gitorious.org/mahara/manual-images
• repository for the Debian packaging to produce the manual on the server: https://gitorious.org/mahara/manual-packaging

Translations are done via Launchpad and start at version Mahara 1.5: https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual

How to set up a user manual translation export branch

1. Set up a new translation series on Launchpad.
2. Create an empty folder on your computer which you can use as basis for the bzr branch. Nothing needs to be in the folder as it is only needed to create a branch on Launchpad which can then be used as export branch for the translation. If you haven't yet set up bzr, you can follow the simple steps of Bazaar in five minutes
3. Push your branch with bzr push lp:~mahara-lang/mahara-manual/1.8_STABLE-export here you replace 1.8 with the actual version number for which you want to create the branch. If you cannot push directly to the project, you can push to your own repository first and then transfer the ownership of the branch to the mahara-lang group.
4. Got to Launchpad and set up a new series for this version of the user manual.
5. Then go to https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual/1.8/+translations where you can import templates and also set up your export branch. Replace the 1.8 with the actual version number.
6. Under "Set up branch synchronization", e.g. https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual/1.8/+translations-settings for the 1.8 user manual, you can set up the export branch.
7. Click "Choose a target branch" and click "Choose" and type the version number for which you want to set up the export branch. A branch suggestion will be made. If it matches the branch to which you pushed your empty bzr directory, choose it. For the Mahara 1.8 user manual that would be ~mahara-lang/mahara-manual/1.8_STABLE-export.
8. Don't worry about the import. We are currently not using that but export the potfiles manually.
9. Go to your user manual branch on your computer and generate the first potfiles export using sphinx-build -b gettext source potfiles. The potfiles will be put into the folder "potfiles".
10. Compress all the potfiles into a .tar.gz file and upload it to the Launchpad translation, for 1.8 that is at https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual/1.8/+translations-upload.
11. Go to the translations import queue, for 1.8 at https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual/1.8/+imports, to set the correct path for each potfile for the import target. Usually, you can leave the values as they are and click "Approve" at the bottom.
12. Go to the templates page, for 1.8 that is at https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-manual/1.8/+templates and edit each template. You will need to set "Path of the template in the source tree, including filename" to potfiles/name_of_the_template/name_of_the_template.pot.
13. The export of the translations runs automatically once a day around 4:50 p.m. - 5:40 p.m. NZST. The export branch is replaced entirely with the content from the translations. An export is only made when the file has changed.