The PHP documentation is maintained using » SVN (Subversion). SVN allows the documentation contributors to make changes to the different files that make up the PHP documentation without stepping on each other's toes.
A SVN system contains a central server, where all the files are stored. A SVN server can host many modules, the name of the main module used by the PHP Documentation people is doc-base which contains the base (like the tools to validate the DocBook, this HOWTO, etc.). And then there are other modules for each language, each named after the language code (eg. de for German). To access this server, you need a SVN client program on your system.
When you decide to work on a file, you need to check it out (~download the file). Then you can make modifications to the file on your local copy. If you are ready, you need to commit the changes (~upload the new file). The SVN client asks for your short comment about why this commit was necessary. You can provide a short summary here about what was changed. The SVN server stores the history of files with these commit messages. Everybody can then see what was modified by you, because all modifications generate a diff posted to one of the mailing lists, and the history is also viewable with a SVN client or the web interface at » http://svn.php.net/. You can also delete a file or add one with your SVN client, if you see it is needed.
This section is not intended to be a SVN tutorial, only a quick walkthrough to help you get started checking out the phpdoc and your translation's tree and committing your changes. The complete SVN documentation can be found at » http://subversion.apache.org/.
SVN tutorials faqs and even a complete book can be found at:
You can also type man svn anytime you would like to get help about your SVN client. This brings up a help text called a "manpage". svn --help can also help you.