#208768 by dvessel, Arancaytar: language direction should be in the HTML source, so it is more accessible even without CSS

#202821 by marco.robotangel: display messages above help in all core themes for consistent user feedback (usability)

#196410 report by daniel.soneira, patch by myself, tested by Freso: several fixes to url() generation and path aliasing, fixing path aliases for node paths and front page links in themes

 - always include CVS Id tags in all files
 - add a new line after the CVS Id, if more code or phpdoc follows in the same code block
 - fix bogus Id tags previously added

#127539: progressive operation support, refactoring update.php code to a generic batch API to support runnning operations in multiple HTTP requests
  - update.php is already on the batch API
  - node access rebuilding is in the works
  - automatic locale importing is in the works

 Thanks to Yves Chedemois (yched) for the good code quality, very wide awareness of issues related to batches,
 and the fantastic turnaround times. Hats off.

  Deprecates the primary_links module.

  This patch was much needed.  Thanks Richards!

  NOTE: if some themers could investigate if there is room for improvement
        with regard to theming, that would be awesome.

  TODO:
  + The contact.module was broken; a new patch for contact.module is needed.
  + Documentation is needed.
  + The most important modules need to be updated ASAP.

- Patch #21855 by TDobes: the recent commit of phptemplate caused a number of problems for non-phptemplate themes. A patch is attached to address these issues.

  Changes include:
    * parsing of the primary/secondary links has been moved out of phptemplate and into theme_get_setting.
    * unnecessary and XHTML-invalidating duplicate div#help removed from themes/bluemarine/page.tpl.php (this is already generated by theme_help)
    * weird generation of the "edit primary/secondary links" messages removed from bluemarine and placed in theme.inc
    * unnecessary changes to themes/bluemarine/style.css rolled back (the phptemplate bluemarine had an older version of style.css than the one in core)
    * chameleon updated to work with new link scheme (passes links through theme_links)

- Converted the Bluemarine theme from XTemplate to PHPTemplate.
- Moved the the Pushbutton theme and the Xtemplate engine to the contributions repository.