an underscore and a meaningful two letter extension (e.g. <spanstyle="font-style: italic;">pt </span>for Portuguese and <spanstyle="font-style: italic;">pt_br</span> for Brasilian variation of the Portuguese language pack). If you are making a Unicode version add <spanstyle="font-weight: bold;">_utf8</span> at the end (eg <spanstyle="font-style: italic;">sr_utf8</span>).<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">You are now ready to start inserting new strings by editing your language... see below for details on this.</p>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">For a new language pack, the very first
thing you need to edit is the string named "thischarset" in moodle.php.
It must contain a valid web character set for your language. After you
change that string, save the moodle.php file, then <spanstyle="font-weight: bold;">reload the page</span>. You can then continue with the rest of the strings. </p>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">If you just want to change a few things in the interface to suit your own site better, <spanstyle="font-weight: bold;">don't start editing one of the standard language packs</span>. If you do then your changes will be overwritten next time you upgrade to a new Moodle.<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">Instead, use the instructions above for
making a brand new language pack, and set the parent language (in
moodle.php) to be the language that is most similar to yours. For
example, a good name for a local english version would be "<spanstyle="font-style: italic;">en_local</span>", and the parent language would be "<spanstyle="font-style: italic;">en</span>" or "<spanstyle="font-style: italic;">en_us</span>".</p>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">Note that for everyone on your site to
see this new pack you have to select it as the site language and
<li>Log on to your Moodle server as an administrator. </li>
<li>Go to <spanstyle="font-weight: bold;">Administration >> Configuration >> Language</span>, which is the language administration page. </li>
<li>On this page you can choose your language from the menu, then choose "Compare and Edit Language".</li>
<li>You should see forms you can edit for each file. If you do not,
then you may have to make sure that the files are writeable - you may
have to change file permissions.</li>
<li>The forms consist of three columns, the first is the name of
each string, the second is that string in English, and the last is
translation in the current language. </li>
<li>Edit missing strings in each files (highlighted in colour),
remembering to hit the "Save changes" button at the end of each form.</li>
<li>It's OK to leave strings empty - Moodle will simply use the
parent language for that string instead. You can define the parent
language in moodle.php, otherwise English is always used by default. </li>
<li>A quick way to see all the missing strings is by using the button to "Check for missing strings". Leave the untranslated strings completely empty or this handy tool won't work.<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">Take care to write the helpfiles XHTML-compliant. This means in short:</p>
<ulstyle="margin-left: 80px;">
<li>All tags should be closed: <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><p></span>lalala<spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"></p></span></li>
<li>All elements should be nested: <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><p></span> lalala <spanstyle="color:rgb(0, 0, 255);"><em></span>lalala<spanstyle="color:rgb(0, 0, 255);"></em></span><spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"></p></span></li>
<li>All elements and attributes must be lower case</li>
<li>All atributes should be written in full and with quotes : <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><p align="right"></span> lalala </p></li>
<li>Empty elements must end with />: <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /><hr /></span>. You should add an extra space before the "/" symbol.</li>
<li>An <img should have an alt="" (it can be empty) en must be closed like other empty elements with a space and /> like <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><img alt="" src="picture.gif" /></span></li>
<li><spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><?=</span> and <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><?</span> should be <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><?php</span></li>
<li>There should not be ANY font tags at all. <spanstyle="color:rgb(255, 0, 0);"><p><em><h1><h2></span> etc should be enough for the language files ...</li>
<li>The language name in the languagepack ($string['thislanguage'] in moodle.php) should generally use Unicode Numeric Character References (NCR) if possible, because this allows the name to work within ANY encoding context (see the Chinese pack for example).</li>
</ul>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">None of the files in the help folder need a doc type, html, body, head opening and closing tags - these files are included with help.php. The script will take care of welforming the pages. This means also there is not much room for HTML creativity! Please stick to the English example.</p>
<pstyle="margin-left: 80px;">The files in the docs folder must be completely XHTML compliant, including doc type, header etc.</p>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">Simply archive your whole new language directory as a <spanstyle="font-weight: bold;">zip</span> file and email it to <ahref="mailto:tra%6es%6ca%74%69o%6e%40%6d%6f%6f%64%6c%65.org">translation@moodle.org</a>.<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">If you are committed to maintaining a language in Moodle, it's best to use <ahref="?file=cvs.html">Moodle CVS</a> so that you have an up-to-date version of Moodle, and can easily "check in" your changes directly into the Moodle project. Contact <ahref="mailto:tra%6es%6ca%74%69o%6e%40%6d%6f%6f%64%6c%65.org">translation@moodle.org</a> if you need help setting this up.<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">You must also subscribe to the <atarget="_top"href="http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=43">Languages Forum</a> for news and discussion about issues that affect translations.<br/>
<pstyle="margin-left: 40px;">Finally, to keep in touch with changes in the project on a day-to-day basis it is a very good idea to subscribe to the <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=30935"target="_top">CVS mailing list</a>. This helps to keep your