A plan for xml-i18n-tools and gnome 2

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

I'm a little annoyed at the half-ass step we took with version 0.9.5 of just
renaming the tarball to a new name, without changing anything else about
xml-i18n-tools -- I really don't see how this gets us any closer to
completing the name change. I also think 0.9.5 is not a good version number.
It should have been version 0.10.

But enough about the past. On to the future.

I propose that we relegate the name "xml-i18n-tools" and the script names
and file names with "xml-i18n-" as a prefix to gnome 1 compatibility. Then
gnome 2 programs can just use things by the intltool name, and the tools can
behave in a way that's suitable for the UTF-8 gnome 2 world.

Here's my detailed proposal:

    1) xml-i18n-tools.spec.in is renamed intltool-spec.in and updated as
necessary with the rest of these changes.

    2) xml-i18n-tools.m4 is renamed intltool.m4 and contains two sets of
macros -- one set with the old names for compatibility (and without the
UTF-8 support you'd need for gnome 2) and one set with the new names,
shedding compatibility (assuming UTF-8 for everything, I guess). We could
remove some of the options added recently since we'll have this dichotomy.

    3) xml-i18n-toolize.in is broken into two scripts. The compatibility one
is named xml-i18n-toolize.in, and the new one is named intltoolize.in.

    4) All other source files named xml-i18n-* are renamed intltool-*. And
the generated files are renamed similarly (without the .in bit).

    5) xml-i18n-toolize installs intltool-*.in as xml-i18n-*.in for
compatibility, but intltoolize installs them under their new name.

    6) Makefile.am is set up to install only intltool-* files. No need for
compatibility for the installed tools.

    7) Update README to explain how to convert a gnome 1 package to use the
gnome 2 version, and explain the compatibility strategy, without being so
long-winded that it's hard to understand.

    8) (optional) Change Makefile to install an empty xml-i18n-tools.m4 or
remove the old xml-i18n-tools.m4 to reduce the chance of failures for people
who aren't using a package manager.

The only thing I don't know about is how to change the name of the cvs
repository from xml-i18n-tools to intltool.

Comments?

Maciej, if you like this idea, then it's probably good to do the copying in
the cvs repository to get this underway or get me the account I need so I
can do it.

    -- Darin