
UniMatrix - Translations
==============================================================================

** Introduction
This will briefly describe how to translate UniMatrix to another language.


** What you need
A text editor. If you want to test it before submitting you will also need
a PalmOS build-environment (See the file docs/BUILD).


** How to start
In the resources directory you will find several files with names
"translation.*". These are existing translations. Take one of these files
(a language that you understand). I will describe here how to translate
from the english file but you can use any of them.
Copy the translation file now to a new file called translation.ISO, where
ISO, where ISO is the ISO acronym for your country (see
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html
for a list of those). So the German file is called translation.de.
Open the file in your favorite text editor.


** What _NOT_ to do
- Do not change the format of the file in any way! Keep all newlines intact
  and do not add new. Do not remove any comments or the Id line. The number of
  lines is used as an indicator for a complete translation!
- Do not change the left side of the equal sign (=). These tokens are used by
  PilRC to insert the matching text!
- Do not change the indentation of the translation file.


** What to do
Translate for all lines containing an equal sign (=) the right side. Keep
the " intact. Try to match the length of the original string, as the space
on the palm display is limited and a string is likely to be shortened if
it is longer than the original string.
PLEASE USE UNIX STYLE LINEBREAKS IF POSSIBLE.


** How to test it
You need a build environment on your system in order to test the new
translation by yourself.

Open the file languages and add a line like:
ISO:language
For German this line reads
de:german
The language may NOT contain white spaces. The ISO code must be the ending of
the translation file. Keep the empty line at the very bottom of the file
or the last language cannot be build, this is a parsing problem.

Now go to the directory and issue the following command:
LANGUAGE=language make clean all
The lower-case language is what you entered in the languages file. This will
produce an UniMatrix.prc file that you can install on your Palm to test.
If errors occur please try
make clean all
If that works you have a format error in your language file. Check if the
" are intact everywhere etc.


** Where to send new languages
If you have a new languge I'm happy to add it to the main distribution file!
As you see on the About screen you will get credit ;-)
You can also send me untested files and I will send you a build back to test
the translation. If you do this please double check the format and syntax.


Tim Niemueller <tim@niemueller.de>
Rees, September 16th 2003



$Id: TRANSLATION,v 1.1 2005/06/23 17:42:03 tim Exp $
