User manual information

Read

There exist a number of comprehensive manuals for Inkscape:

• Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program by Tavmjong Bah
• A FLOSS Manuals guide
• A Finnish translation of the FLOSS Manuals guide

A larger list is available at the main Inkscape website.

Contribute

1. Subscribe to the inkscape-docs mailing list
2. Read the manual
3. Read what needs to be done
4. Introduce yourself in the list and tell us what you want to do so that no work is duplicated
5. Read writing conventions
6. Start contributing.

Here is is a hint: we try to use as much content from release notes as possible, since last 5-6 ones were written in a very much verbose way.

Translate

We very much welcome translations of the manual. Please join the inkscape-docs mailing list and tell us about yourself.

So far we have established the following translations "zones":

• Brazilian
• Catalan
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian

Here is how you translate:

1. In your translation zone you will see contents of the book. For each chapter there are "Edit" and "Translate" links and a status combobox that reveals various options. Start with those chapters which are marked as "Untranslated".
2. Click "Translate"
3. In the newly opened copy'n'paste contents of the most recent revision of chapter fromthe left editing field to the right one. A sequence of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+C should do the trick
4. Translate
5. Choose a new status of the newly created translation. Untranslated — if you just copy'n'pasted original text in English. Unpublished — if you translated the text, but want to review and improve it before it goes live. Published — if your translation is really ready to go live and visible for everybody else.
6. Click 'Save'

You can still do further revision of that chapter anytime by clicking 'Edit' from the Contents table.

Reading writing conventions is strictly recommended for better understanding of markup rules and use of styles.

You can also track revisions in the translation zone by clicking "Subscribe" link in the translation zone index page. This will enable mailing you list of changes (to the address with which you registered in the system).

It's best to team up with several people and coordinate your efforts.

German contributors might like to reuse some text from German translation started by User:FZap in the DocBook/XML days of the manual.

We still haven't decided how to provide source SVG files in most comfortable way to make localization of illustrations easy. Ideas are welcome.

Note that French translation is placed in a different zone, because it's mostly ready. As soon as each translation is close to completeness, it is moved to its own subdomain too.

People

• Relsi Ramone - Contributor for Brazilian Portuguese - relsi.ramone at gmail.com
• Cedric Gemy - Contributor Fr - cedric.gemy at gmail.com
• Elisa - contributor in French - elisa at ec.yemanja.net
• John - Author and French/British translation
• Ernesto - Spanish translation - celise at prodigy.net.mx
• Antonio - Italian translation - antonio.angelo at poste.it
• Bryce - English translation/editing - bryce at bryceharrington.com
• Kevin - English translation/editing - inkscape.docs at wixsonit.com
• Colin Marquardt - volunteer for a German translation from English, help with xml2po if needed. Especially interested in Embedded_Help.
• vonHalenbach-de - volunteer for a translation of pygmees manual from English to German
• Alexandre Prokoudine - volunteer for a translation into Russian

Misc

• automated screenshot taking: maybe via Dogtail (see [1] and [2]) or LDTP?
• see http://live.gnome.org/autoshot, http://osdir.com/ml/gnome.documentation/2006-08/msg00045.html

• the Inscape "man page"

• VectorAndBitmap
• Inkscape for Adobe Illustrator users
• TricksAndTips
• KeyboardShortcuts
• InkscapeColor