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Quick Sheet for Localization

If you don't want to bother with too much technical details, you may refer to this quick sheet and go straight to do translation job.

1. Download TranslationResources.zip and extract files to a working directory, say, "Italian".
2. Go to directory "Italian/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES" and open "default.po" in POEdit, and carryout translation. In addition, it is recommended that you put your author info in Project Info window. (POEdit -> Main menu -> Catalog -> Settings)
3. When you save the PO file, by default POEdit will compile the file into "default.mo" which is the translation resource used by Open Contacts.
4. Rename directory "en" into "it" which stands for Italian. For what to rename the directory for your language, please refer to ISO 639 language codes .
5. Go to directory "Italian/templates", and translate the files (XML, XSL and HTML) there. The xml tags pretty much can explain themself, in addition you may download "Spanish.zip" to confirm what to alter in order to do translation.
6. Assuming that you have WinZip or 7Z installed, in Windows Explorer, select directories "locale" and "templates", and right-click on the selection, then from the context menu you may run a command to compress the selection into a zip file say "Italian.zip", which will have "locale" and "templates" as root directories.
7. Run Open Contacts v5.3.8 or above, and execute [Main menu -> Tools -> Apply translation patch] and locate the zip file just created. After restarting Open Contacts, you should be able to see the translation in place.

After being satisfied by the test results, you may distribute the zip file to your buddies.

Hints:

When applying the translation patch, Open Contacts will copy directory "locale" into the program directory of Open Contacts. As this directory is protected in Windows Vista or normal user mode (LUA) of Windows XP, you may need to to run Open Contacts as administrator or power user.