> Before we open the update stream for the next release, we 
> also need to 
> decide whether it will be called 3.8 or 4.0.  Personally, 
> right now I'm 
> leaning toward calling it 4.0, because the m17n work will 
> require that 
> the .changes file has a new encoding, so we might as well do the 
> .sources file at the same time and not have them be different 
> encodings.  A new .sources/.changes encoding seems like a significant 
> enough change to justify a new major version number. 

I think doing the m17n work in itself is worth labelling the release as
4.0.

It would be nice to also update the out-of-box look and content, to make
it "look" like 4.0.

> Or, we could use the occasion of having 4.0 be the next release to go 
> for whatever VM overhaul needs to be done (if any), and have 
> the image 
> format change in this next release.

+1 for doing the VM overhaul and image format change...

I think that doing m17n plus the VM/image-format stuff in the same
release is ambitious, but doable.  Maybe we should guess-timate that the
alpha period will be, say, twice as long?  Then we could split the alpha
phase into two chunks; first do m17n (and use Harvesting Parties to
shake out some of its kinks), then do the VM/image-format stuff.