Since the documentation is stored in SVN, you'll need a SVN client. SVN is a common form of version control and every operating system has clients for this. A client does not mean a GUI although some people prefer GUI interfaces. The following list is not exhaustive put should provide an idea for what we're talking about.

The most common is TortoiseSVN. Here are the steps to checkout the sources of the PHP manual using it:

• Download and install TortoiseSVN: http://tortoisesvn.net/
• Open a new explorer window and go to the folder you wish to do the checkout into
• Right click anywhere in the blank area to spawn the context menu, select “SVN Checkout...”
• A new window will popup asking for details about the checkout, these values will be remembered, so you will not need to enter them again
• Enter the following URL: “http://svn.php.net/repository/phpdoc”, then OK to begin the checkout. If you're prompted to enter a password while checking out, then type in “phpfi” and OK
• When the checkout is complete, then it should have created a directory called “phpdoc” where the php documentation source tree will be

The command-line works fine, download/install the sources (or binaries) from http://subversion.tigris.org/

The command-line works fine, download/install the sources (or binaries) from http://subversion.tigris.org/

Using SVN, checkout the source files of the PHP manual. These are the files you will edit and commit, and anyone (no account is required) may checkout these files. For example, using the command-line:

• svn checkout http://svn.php.net/repository/phpdoc/modules/doc-en phpdoc

That will use svn:externals to checkout both the doc-base and en/ modules, into a local directory named phpdoc. Then, after the above you might:

• cd phpdoc
• vim en/preface.xml

In other words, this will create a directory named 'phpdoc' with a subdirectory 'en' that contains all of the English files. Now, a translator will instead do something like the following (to checkout German):

• svn checkout http://svn.php.net/repository/phpdoc/modules/doc-de phpdoc-de
• cd phpdoc-de
• vim de/preface.xml en/preface.xml

You'll need a recent version of PHP. Since the build system requires PHP 5.3, you should probably install it. However, building the manual is optional as validation (ensuring XML changes are valid) is a separate process and will work with any version of PHP 5.

The build system that builds both the downloadable and online versions of the PHP manual. It also builds the PEAR manual, and several other DocBook 5 based documents. Installing PhD is optional, however it's recommended so you may see what your changes will look like.

Any will do, as XML is simply text. Most text editors provide syntax highlighting for XML files.