# The manual

This folder contains wxMaxima's manual (wxmaxima.md) and all files that are needed
in order to generate translated HTML files from it. If you want to help us to
improve the wxMaxima manual please send patches and improvements for the
[Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) file - a lightweight markup
language with plain-text-formatting syntax - not for the HTML files.

The HTML files (wxmaxima.html and language specific files like wxmaxima.de.html)
are technically not necessary, they can be generated during the build process.
But if the required tools (pandoc and po4a) are not available, these files are
installed, so that the documentation is available (maybe not the latest version).

# The translation of the manual

### Translating the manual to a new language

In order to translate the manual to an entirely new language it is sufficient to
equip wxmaxima.md.pot with the translations and to give the resulting file a name in
the format `<language>.po`.

### Improving an existing translation

In order to improve an existing translation just edit the according .po file.
Any help is always welcome.

### Specialities of the manual

[po4a](https://po4a.org/) offers to translate the characters
that contain the formatting hints for the markdown parser, too. If you remove
them or exchange them by something completely different the formatting will change, too.

### Why not to translate the manual file directly?

Translating a complete file is more convenient than translating parts with a .po file.
But manually keeping the translation of a text file in sync with the original
if the original changes is a complicated task.

Translating .po files is a more complicated than translating the original text.
But po4a keeps track about which paragraphs have already been translated or
need to be translated which makes maintaining the translation easier.
