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I suggest you include a revision history, with release dates, in each
manual. Then if a manual is not printed in a certain language until a
certain revision number, that will be shown because the first revision will
be listed as 2.1.C, etc. Also, in the case of a revision number jump, the
history will show the gap, so no one will say "we never got a version 2.1.D
like the English manual" etc. The release dates would provide a second data
point for reference, so someone could see that the Lithuanian 2.1.E and the
English 2.1.E were released on the same date.
In my company, we need to adopt better version identification. We have been
using a hard-coded revision date in our footers, but this is a leftover from
when we published all our manuals as Word documents (online or hardcopy).
We recently began to put a revision history in our manuals as an appendix.
This history indicates which revisions to the systems are included in that
version of the manual.
We produce software systems which are modified incrementally, without major
version re-releases to the entire system. Usually these arise because of a
particular project authorized to enhance or add some element of the larger
system. So our manuals need to show whether a certain project is included
in that version of the manual.
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