Re: version numbering conventions

Subject: Re: version numbering conventions
From: Niebergall Peter-APN001C <apn001c -at- EUROPE -dot- MOT -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 15:19:10 +0200

Hello David/fellow Techwrlers,

I know most of you US-Americans have an immanent disliking to European
standardization approaches, but somewhere in ISO 9001 or 9002 the version
numbering is standardized in a (IMHO) practical fashion. The numbering
scheme I used for over 7 years now (which has never been questioned) is as
follows:

Drafts, baseline copies, and other prereleases start with 0.1, next formal
internal revision 0.2, etc.. Outline changes/wording/add a paragraph stuff
that is continually updated in the course of the document creation gets a
0.11, 0.12, etc. version number, which is for my personal use, no "boss"
reviewer ever sees those, I occasionally pass these versions to peer or
section reviewers.

The first formal release of the document is 1.0, which means that the
document is fit for practical use (I mainly write corporate procedures and
user guides), and is given to the potential users for practical "field
review", which you software TWs call beta release, I believe. Then user
feedback is collected and periodically merged into the document as version
1.1, 1.2, et cetera et nauseum. ISO also defines specific markers (revision
numbers in circles and lines on the left paper margin to indicate which
paragraphs/sections have been modified when, the why is stated in the
revision control section) - and it is usual that when the lines and markings
in the left margin start overlapping into double or triple lines, an archive
copy is saved, the document version number is increased to the next whole
integer, and all revision markers are cleared. This can continue for all
eternity, but the versions rarely go above 3 or 4, since then the regular
product lifecycle is over (or the departmental structure was reorganized
once again by Dogbert(TM?), thus hasta la vista, procedure).

This numbering schema was used successfully before the dawn of version
control systems, yet if you have access to a version control tool like PVCS
and are one of ten writers on the same document, use it. Approaches to use
software version control tools like MS Visual Source Safe for document
version control may be nifty for software documentation, but for a specific
set of one or two procedures it's an administrative overkill (using a cannon
to kill a sparrow, as we Germans say...)

BTW, Eric, shouldn't the archives of this list be full of this kind of info
??? As a list newbie I haven't searched those yet, a grave offense - eh?
8-)

Cheers,
Peter Niebergall

From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=




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