Identification of documents across languages

Putting the revision number in the document has problems. Notice that git, for example, doesn't have classic file revision numbers like SVN. Simple numbers need to be dished out by an authority, rather than just incremented each time the file is saved. After all, different people can each save the file. The versioning, whatever it is, needs to be tied with the versioning =system=. In the case of files stored on Alfresco, that's Alfresco's version number. When you refer to some revision, it's not just "some copy I got from so-and-so via some passing around", but some place you can go and get a "committed" version from. Furthermore, you have some weak ordering so you know if an available version is newer than the one you were using before.

For files that are not gotten from Alfresco, wherever you got them from needs some versioning system.

So, I stick by my analysis, but amend it to decorate the version number with the authority that produced that number. As a community, we can have a (very small) registration of codes and their repositories, along with a description of each.
So, you might refer to document 0202WG3-[AF]2.2-en, where [AF] refers to this group's existing Alfresco system, and the component could be omitted when it is not necessary. 0202WG3-2.2 omits two components, for example.

We also need to ensure that document numbers are assigned uniquely. A systematic approach with wildcards can be used to register a whole book of many files, and this list is kept to ensure that new ids are assigned uniquely when someone wants one, but they are still short and reasonably mnemonic.
Perhaps we want to flip it around from the current file names so the wild part is always a suffix: WG3* is "Writer's Guide for major version 3" with the per-book note on how chapter numbers are filled to two digits and suffixed to that.

So we need, perhaps on a Wiki page, two lists: The unique id base part assignment, and the versioning authority information.

Hi, :slight_smile:

My *personal* view of the basic principles of a versioning system for
English documentation would be this:

1) The versioning system should be totally independent of Alfresco's
versioning, and should be maintained manually by the English docs
team, and based on the status of a document as considerered by the
working contributors. That way, the system is properly portable to any
working environment.

2) The reference version of English documentation should be stored on
the English docs team's working environment - Alfresco, or whatever
other system the team chooses to use.

3) The document's meta data seems to me to be the logical place to
store the versioning info. You get genuine portability and are not
tied to any particular working environment. Plus, you're not tied to
carefully preserving OS file names in order to preserve the versioning
information.

4) The principles and rules of the versioning system should be
explained on the wiki, but the English docs team should non be tied to
maintaining records of versions on the wiki. All that could be done in
an automated manner via Alfresco, and made publically consultable on a
login-free web page.

5) We should try and devise a system that is as easy to understand and
apply as possible - especially by people without a degree in
mathematics. :smiley:

That would be my own 2 cents. What do people think about all that?

And what specific information items would we need to track?

David Nelson

David,

I agree with what you have said here, especialy the "keep it simple"
principle in item 5.

Some items I think need to be in the meta data:

* LibO version for which the doc has been verified
* Publication date of the doc
* Version number of the doc
* List of embedded sections of common material? I'm not sure how that might
work.

I'll probably think of other items later.

I am writing a separate note on the topic of embedded sections of common
material, in response to Jean Weber's earlier note.

Hal

Hi Hal, David, John, all,

I agree with what you have said here, especialy the "keep it simple"
principle in item 5.

Some items I think need to be in the meta data:

* LibO version for which the doc has been verified
* Publication date of the doc
* Version number of the doc

unique Identifier for this document

language of the document

* List of embedded sections of common material? I'm not sure how that might
work.

what do you mean with embedded sections of common material?

Karl-Heinz

We have been talking about putting some material, which is used in
several books, into separate files and linking them into the working
copies of chapters. This way, the information is maintained in only one
place. When the chapters are published, the linked files would be
embedded.

Examples of common material: the PDF creation, LibO options, managing
templates.

--Jean