It seems no one has *done* this yet. I think it's a really good idea. I think Hugh is, in general, right -- it's OK to nuke stuff, that's why it's in a version control repository. That said, in the TEI universe where the cadre of those responsible for the repository changes over time, I'm more inclined to Martin's clever obsolete/ sibling of branches/, tags/, and trunk/. Besides, that way we could easily reverse the decision, and delete things from obsolete/. (Could reverse decision and recover deleted stuff if needed, too, but much harder.) But IIRC (and I'd love to be wrong on this), it is not easy in Subversion to ascertain from where a directory was moved. So a check-in comment like "moved .../trunk/duck/quack/waddle/ to .../obsolete/waddle/" would be a good idea, no? I'm happy to file a ticket, assign it to myself, and do this. I hate cruft.
True. But not everything needs to be kept in the attic. It's ok to get rid of stuff when it's no longer useful.