Help us

There are several ways in which you get involved by helping us improve GIMP's documentation.

If you are interested in translating the manual the best way to start is going to Damned Lies, register an account and apply to be a member of the language team for the language you want to translate. You can then start translating the po files of GIMP's manual found on that website.

The current progress of each translation can be found on our main page. Detailed information about the progress for each separate file is available on the already mentioned gimp-help page of Damned Lies.

If your language isn't listed yet as being translated, then please contact us on IRC, or open an issue on our issue tracker. We will then add your language and shortly after the relevant files to translate will turn up on Damned Lies.

If you would like to help out writing and improving our documentation, then our gimp-help repository is the right place to start.

Preferably you build the most up to date manual yourself, or check the latest online version. The source of the manual can be found in XML files in the /src directory. Find a topic that interests you or that needs updating and start writing.

You could also take a look at our issue tracker to see which documentation issues you can help with.

Our User Manual is written in Docbook XML files. Some knowledge of Docbook and XML in general is useful, but if you look at the structure of the documents that are already written, it should not be too difficult. If you are uncertain about something, you can always ask, see the links below on how to contact us.

It would be a good idea to subscribe to messages that have the GIMP or documentation tags on Gnome's Discourse server. Note: when asking a question on Discourse make sure you add tags for GIMP and documentation (or i18n if it is related to translations), or we may not see your message.

Most of the GIMP developers can also be reached on the #gimp IRC channel on irc.gimp.org. The best chances to talk are usually during European evening hours, but be patient, getting an answer can take a while. Note that there is no need to ask if you can ask a question: just ask.

For specific documentation questions you can also open a new issue or comment on an open issue.

Before you can send us your changes you should have a Gnome Gitlab account and fork the gimp-help repository. For each new issue you work on, please make a separate branch. When ready push your changes to your branch and then open a merge request (MR).

We will then look at your changes and possibly suggest or request further changes. If everything looks fine, your MR will be merged into our documentation. Note: we are all volunteers here, so be patient. Getting back to you can take time. Most of the time we will get back to you within a week, but sometimes it will take considerably longer.

Make sure that the e-mail address connected to your Gnome GitLab account receives notifications when someone comments on your MR. Notification settings can be changed in your Gnome GitLab account.

More info on contributing can be found in our repository.