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What does a Pidgin translator need to know, to work with monotone?

Actually, you don't really need to work with monotone to translate .po files, you can simply use http://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/ to download the old .po file, and the newest .pot file, and when you finish translating, submit the .po file using a ticket. The following is just so you know how to use monotone.

1. Download the bootstap DB:
   wget http://developer.pidgin.im/static/pidgin.mtn.bz2
2. Unpack it:
   bzip2 -d pidgin.mtn.bz2
3. If you are using monotone version 0.34 or above, you need to migrate it:
   mtn -d pidgin.mtn db migrate
4. Sync the DB with the Pidgin monotone online:
   mtn -d pidgin.mtn pull pidgin.im im.pidgin.*
5. Checkout a version of the code base into "workdir":
   mtn -d pidgin.mtn co -b im.pidgin.pidgin workdir
6. The .po file is in workdir/po/
7. The .pot file can be generated using
   intltool-update --pot
   in the workdir/po/ directory (thus says the README), or just download it from http://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/

To update only the workdir/po/ directory, enter it, and run the command:

mtn update

Once you're done, pack the .po file in some common compression format (GZip, PKZip, bzip, etc.) and  create a new ticket at http://developer.pidgin.im/simpleticket attaching your translation file. Also, please provide your full name, a contact email address, and the language and country code for your translation.

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