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<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//KDE//DTD DocBook XML V4.2-Based Variant V1.1//EN"
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<chapter id="contribute">
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>How can I contribute to &kde;?</para>
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>&kde; is a free software project that lives from voluntary contributions. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to &kde;. Not only programmers are welcome. There are many ways in which you can help to improve &kde;:</para>
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>Test the software.</para
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>Send in bug reports. For more information on this, see <link linkend="bug-report"
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>How do I submit a bug report?</link
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>Write documentation or help files. You can get some information by visiting the <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org/doc/"
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>&kde; Editorial Team Home Page</ulink
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>Translate programs, documentation, and help files. For more information on this, you should visit <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org"
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>The &kde; Translators' and Documenters' Web Site</ulink
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>Draw nice icons or compose sound effects. You can visit the <ulink url="http://artist.kde.org/"
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>&kde; artists page</ulink
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> to find out more.</para
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>Write articles and books about &kde;. If you want to help spread the word about &kde;, simply send an email to <email
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>kde-pr@kde.org</email
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>. This will get you in touch with the &kde; public relations volunteers.</para
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>Program new &kde; applications. Please refer to <xref linkend="programming"/> for more information.</para
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>Of course, sponsors are also welcome. :-)</para
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>There are several places to look for more information if you want to get involved in the development. The first step is to subscribe to some of the <ulink url="http://www.kde.org/mailinglists/"
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>. You will soon see something that can be improved or added.</para>
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<question id="bug-report">
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>How do I submit a bug report?</para>
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>There is a bug tracking system available at <ulink url="http://bugs.kde.org"
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>http://bugs.kde.org</ulink
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>. The system features a wizard to submit new bug reports and a list of all known bugs.</para>
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>The easiest way to submit a bug is to select <menuchoice
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>Report Bug...</guimenuitem
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> from the menu bar of the application with the bug. This will open a small dialogue box with a link to the bug tracking system. Please make sure to follow the instructions of the bug reporting wizard.</para>
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<question id="programming">
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>I want to program for &kde;. What should I do first?</para>
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>Everybody is encouraged to develop software for &kde;. What you should do first depends strongly on your experience, ⪚ whether you have already learned C++ or have experience with the &Qt; toolkit and so on.</para>
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>To get into &kde; programming, you will need some basic tools: <application
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>automake</application
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>autoconf</application
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>. You should look to <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/"
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>http://developer.kde.org/</ulink
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> for more tips.</para>
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>Another excellent resource for learning &kde; programming is the &Qt; online tutorials. These are installed along with &Qt;. To view them, open <filename
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>/doc/html/index.html</filename
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> in &konqueror; and bookmark it. The tutorials can be found under "Using Qt". The source code for each lesson can be found in the <filename class="directory"
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>There is, however, one thing that everybody interested in programming for &kde; should do: <emphasis
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>subscribe to the developers mailing list</emphasis
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>. To subscribe, you have to send an email to <ulink url="mailto:kde-devel-request@kde.org"
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>kde-devel-request@kde.org</ulink
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> with the subject <userinput
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>subscribe <replaceable
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>your_email_address</replaceable
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>Please read <link linkend="subscribe"
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>How to subscribe/unsubscribe to these lists</link
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> carefully. Everything said there applies to the development list as well.</para
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>How do I get access to the <acronym
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>The &kde; project uses <acronym
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> to develop the core parts of the software. Usually, when you have changed one of the parts (⪚ fixed a bug), and you want to commit this change, the best way is to create a patch against a current snapshot and send this patch to the developer/maintainer of the respective program.</para>
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>If you are doing this more or less regularly, you can ask Stephan Kulow, <email
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>coolo@kde.org</email
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> for direct access to the <acronym
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> server. But be aware that more users will slow down <acronym
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> access for all developers, so we want to keep the number of people with direct <acronym
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> access reasonably small. But feel free to ask!</para>
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>I am just curious. Can I have read-only access to the <acronym
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>Yes. It is possible to get read-only access to the <acronym
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> repository with <application
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> utility. You can find more information about how to set up <application
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> for the &kde; repository from <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsup.html"
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>How to use <application
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> to get &kde;</ulink
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>In addition, anonymous <acronym
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> service is also available. To find out more about how to set up and use anonymous <acronym
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>, please see <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
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>Are there any <application
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> mirror sites for &kde;?</para>
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>Yes. The main &kde; server is normally very busy. Please take a look at <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsupmirrors.html"
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>http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsupmirrors.html</ulink
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> and <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
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>http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html</ulink
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> for the list of available mirrors.</para
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>Once you have selected a new <application
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> server, simply replace <screen
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*default host=cvs.kde.org
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*default host=cvsup.your.new.host
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> in your <application
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>The instructions to change the anoncvs server can be found on <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
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>http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html</ulink
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>How do I go about translating &kde; programs into my native language?</para>
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>Look at the <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org"
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>The &kde; Translators' and Documenters' Web Site</ulink
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> to see whether your program is already translated (most are). Otherwise you will find information there on how to do it yourself.</para>