Pootle as a PO file repository

The Pootle server at https://translate.apache.org is the standard process for translating OpenOffice.
Find more (but OUTDATED AS OF 2013) information at: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Pootle_User_Guide

Pootle can be used as a online translation tool. But it also supports basic download and upload operations even using Zip archives. I want to describe how to use Pootle as a PO file repository for offline translation. We'll use Git to ease change tracking in local files.

To download the entire UI or HC2 translation you'll need to have "archive" privileges. After logging in and switching to editor mode you can see "Download Zip of folder" in the root folder of UI or HC2. Follow the link and get the file to your computer. In my case I've downloaded the file into /home/rail/work/ooo/QA/3.0 folder.

Unzip the file into po folder:

   unzip openoffice_org-tr.zip -d po

Now we should create local Git repository and import initial files:

   cd po
   git init-db
   git add .
   git commit -m "Initial import"

Let's also create a tag "initial" to ease our future work:

   git tag initial

Now we are ready to start the translation process using our favorite PO editor (Virtaal or Emacs with po-mode :) ). Don't forget to commit your work into local repository, in regular intervals.

When you feel that you are ready to upload your changes to Pootle (online PO repository ;) ) you need to prepare Zip file with changed files. First of all, commit your latest changes into your Git repository:

   git commit -a -m "ready to go"

I use the following command to create needed zip file with changed files:

   zip -r ../openoffice_org-tr-changed.zip `git diff initial HEAD |grep '^--- a' |sed 's/^--- a\///'`

Upload the Zip file via Pootle interface (requires upload privilege). Select either merge or replace method.. Merge method will try to merge untranslated messages, but changed messages will be added as suggestions. So you need to walk through them after. Replace is dangerous one, choose it only if you're sure that weren't any changes in Pootle since initial download.

Note: Note: upload process can take some time, maybe even a lot. Seems like Pootle tries to re-index the files on the fly (FIXME). If you have some problems with uploading you can send an email to tools@l10n.openoffice.org.