Describe new development process

git-svn-id: svn://svn.lyx.org/lyx/lyx-devel/trunk@1115 a592a061-630c-0410-9148-cb99ea01b6c8

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@@ -1,15 +1,45 @@
-This is a LyX development release
----------------------------------
+Preamble: LyX versionning scheme
 
-The LyX Team has adopted a new development model and
-tries to keep the development version stable as far
-as possible, but since the program is changing, the
-development version will be less stable than the
-stable releases.
+       In September of 1999 the LyX Team decided that we could no
+       longer successfully use the two strand development process
+       like the Linux kernel. We are in the process of switching to a
+       development model similar to that used by Fetchmail where we
+       will only make small stable changes between releases and
+       release more often. All future releases should be stable
+       although we are currently in a transition period where some
+       major changes have to be introduced and are likely to affect
+       the stability in the short term.
 
-So, don't use this development version on your production
-documents without testing everything in depth first.
+       These changes include: 
 
+        * Use of C++ Standard Library features such as the Standard
+          Template Library (STL), string and streams.  
+
+        * Establishing the foundations of GUI/system independence, 
+
+        * Rearrangement of the directory structure, 
+
+        * Use of libtool, automake and autoconf. 
+
+       Once the transition is over the 1.1 series should be very
+       stable and we will then release 1.2.0. This new series will be
+       in a state of continual advancement. Note the word
+       "advancement" and not "development." Development will be
+       occurring in branches of CVS and once the feature/modification
+       has proved stable it will be merged into the main releases.
+
+       Versionning uses a continuous numbering scheme where odd or
+       even numbering is no longer significant. Prereleases are
+       labelled with a "pre" suffix and any fixes required between
+       stable releases have a "fix" suffix. Thus there are three
+       possible file names:
+
+          lyx-1.1.5.tar.gz       -- stable release
+          lyx-1.1.5fix2.tar.gz   -- bug fix of the 1.1.5 stable release.
+          lyx-1.1.5pre1.tar.gz   -- potentially unstable test release
+
+       The fix releases contain no new functionality; only fixes that
+       have already made their way into the cvs repository. 
 
 What is LyX?