[Tuxpaint-stamps] Idea: splitting Tux Paint Stamps based on locale (sound files)

[Bill K. <nb...@so...>]

So the Tux Paint Stamps collection has gotten really huge since
the last release.  While we do have some new stamp images,
mostly it's due to the localized descriptive sound files.
(e.g., someone saying the phrase "A crow", in various languages).

They're currently accounting for about 2/3rd of the size of the
Tux Paint Stamps collection.  Here are some statistics I just ran,
using some Unix-y commands in my CVS checkout of the 'tuxpaint-stamps'
repository:

 * Number of stamps:
   tuxpaint-stamps/stamps/$ find . -name "*.png" -or -name "*.svg" | wc -l
   1053

 * Number of localized description sound files:
   tuxpaint-stamps/stamps$ find . -name "*_desc_*.ogg" | wc -l
   7320

 * Breakdown (counts) of localized description sound files, by language:
   tuxpaint-stamps/stamps$ find . -name "*_desc_*.ogg" | rev | cut -d "_" -f 1-2 | rev | sort | uniq -c
       702 desc_be.ogg
       925 desc_bg.ogg
       926 desc_ca.ogg
       322 desc_da.ogg
         1 desc_da.ogg.ogg  << oops? :)
       681 desc_el.ogg
       898 desc_es.ogg
       936 desc_fr.ogg
         6 desc_ml.ogg
        67 desc_nl.ogg
       928 desc_ro.ogg
       928 desc_ru.ogg

 * Size of entirety of tuxpaint-stamps (cvs checkout):
   tuxpaint-stamps$ du -s -h
   253M    .

 * Size of just the localized description sound files
   (excuse the silly way in which I calculated this ;) )

   tuxpaint-stamps$ find . -name "*_desc_*.ogg" -exec cat {} \; > ALL_DESC_OGG.dat ; ls -lh ALL_DESC_OGG.dat
   -rw-rw-r-- 1 kendrick kendrick 171M Aug 29 11:05 ALL_DESC_OGG.dat


I'm thinking at, at this point, it makes sense to start breaking
the Tux Paint Stamps release up, like so:

 * core
   + The stamps:
     - image files (png, svg)
     - textual description files (all locales) (txt)
     - data files (dat)
     - sound effects (ogg)
   - Documentation
   - The English language description sounds (_desc.ogg)
 * Belarusian descriptive sounds
   - _desc_be.ogg
 * Bulgarian descriptive sounds
   - _desc_bg.ogg
 * Catalan descriptive sounds
   - _desc_ca.ogg
 * ...etc.

One thing that causes a wrinkle in this idea is that, in some cases,
the stamps have been separated into their category heirarchies:

 * Separate Linux RPM packages are produced for each category
   (e.g., tuxpaint-stamps-food-2014.08.23-1.noarch.rpm,
   tuxpaint-stamps-hobbies-2014-08-23-1.noarch.rpm, etc.)

 * The Windows Installer for Tux Paint Stamps provides a checklist of
   categories that the user (parent/teacher/etc.) wishes to install.

Without a package manager to handle things for you (e.g.,a 
"tuxpaint-stamps" meta-package that depends on all of the individual
stamp category packages), it can be annoying to have to download so
many separate files if you want to install all the stamps.

However, if you don't wish to install every category, it's a lot nicer
to not be required to _download_ all of them, regardless of what you
choose to install.

It may be, though, that simply reducing the download size for all
stamps (by removing the descriptive sound effects) will alleviate
that problem -- for now, at least. :)


I'm interested to hear what people think about this subject.
At the very least, I'd like to redesign the "make release" process
in tuxpaint-stamps' Makefile such that it produces a core stamps
release, and separate, individual localization releases (add-ons)
that contain just the descriptive sound effect files.

Then, when I produce a Tux Paint release, I'll upload a dozen
.tar.gz tarball files (core, plus 11 localizations, currently).

This will undoubtedly affect the work of John and Shin-Ichi, since
they've both been doing maintenance and releases of the Windows build,
and Shin-Ichi has been doing releases of the RPMs.  So I'd like to
do what I can to make their lives easier, both in terms of:

 a. what they've been doing so far (splitting up categories)
 b. what I'll be forcing upon them (separating out localized sounds)


Since Tux Paint Stamps is currently _so_ very large, I'd love to
get this figured out soon, and produce an updated release, just
for the stamps.  (It should not require any changes to Tux Paint
itself, so doesn't need to wait for another release of TP itself.)

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

-- 
-bill!
(with a woefully slow DSL line at home ;) )