Proposal for branch restructuring for intrepid

[Matthew East]

Hi,

I've had a couple of thoughts for improving the branch structure for
ubuntu-intrepid (and also for the other derivatives, if everyone
agrees). I'd like to hear your thoughts on them.

1. Remove translated xml from the tree.

The main reason our branches are so large is that the xml for each
document is reproduced many multiple times because of all the
translations. We can cut down on this immensely by removing translated
xml completely from the branch, leaving only the po files, and
creating the xml at build time rather than in advance. This would be
relatively easy to do (albeit with a slight amendments to the
procedure for fixing mistakes in translations).

2. Rationalise structure

Since we moved to separate branches for derivatives, there have been
quite a few things that we can tidy up. Examples include the presence
of an unnecessary "ubuntu" directory even though it's an ubuntu
branch, and the fact that we have two "libs" directories and a
"common" directory performing essentially identical functions.

I'd like to rework things. There are essentially two ways we can do it.

(a) Put all the documents in the top level. This is my preferred
option, so the branch would look like this:

/about-ubuntu
/add-applications
...
/debian
...
/libs
...
/serverguide

and so on. The stuff currently in "common" would be merged with "libs"
and would probably include the various scripts we have.

(b) Retain a separate directory for help system documents, eg:

/debian
/help
/libs
/other

The "help" directory would contain everything shipped with the help
system, and the "other" directory would include stuff like the
serverguide and the switching from windows guide. To be honest the
reason I don't like this option so much is because I'd prefer all
documents to have the same treatment.

Look forward to your thoughts.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF