Re: Re : Revision Dates (are they necessary ???)

["Thiessen, Christopher(Chris) E" <CHRISTOPHER -dot- E -dot- THIESSEN -at- CDEV -dot- COM>]

Greetings, Frederic!

In my 16+ years of producing documentation I've found that the issue of
version control is managed by how you bind the document's pages together.
The documentation my company produces was "perfect" bound (like a paperback
book) and is now spiral bound, which means that we do not issue update pages
(as you might when you use three-ring binders). So, the issue date/version
number appears once in the front of the document. Periodically we revise the
entire document and reissue it. Our software/shipping department is staffed
by folks who can easily answer the "do I have the most current version"
question.

Of course, if you are working with some version of three-ring binders (which
we found to be more expensive than either perfect binding or spiral
binding), you really need to have some indicator on each page as to the
issued/revised date. In a previous position which involved managing about
15,000 page of documentation I compiled a complete list of pages and
appropriate issue/revision dates. When customers would call and ask if they
had the most current version of doc, I'd ask them to open any document to
any page and tell me the issued or revised date at the bottom of that page.
Invariably (since only obsessive mutants like myself like to insert update
pages) they'd be one or two updates off, so I would offer either to send
them free the most current updates or to sell them a most-current copy of
that document. Most folks chose to purchase a most-current copy or an
entirely new set of documentation. Using this strategy I generated about
$15,000 of additional revenue for the company in a year, which paid for a
lot of machine upgrades for the group.

Chris Thiessen
christopher -dot- e -dot- thiessen -at- cdev -dot- com
 ----------
From: Frederic Wronecki
To: "Technical Writers List; for a
Subject: Re : Revision Dates (are they necessary ???)
Date: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 11:40AM

Chuck,

May I raise a heretic question :
Is it mandatory to place a date on a document ?

The need is for the user to know whether his/her copy is
the current one.

This can be achieved either with dates, or with version
numbers (or both, of course).

None of these solutions give the user the absolute certainty
he holds the current version, unless the distribution process
compels him to acknowledge every update.

And the drawback of dates is that an "old" document
is more easily suspected of not being valid.

The debate about different dates on different pages
or sections can be transposed to version numbers.

Besides, you can add a greater level of detail
by providing a two-index version number :
 - Each section has a version number AxBy,
where y is incremented for every minor change
and x for every major change.
 - Each graphic embedded in the document has its own
version number AxBy.
 - The document (i.e. the "shipping unit") has a global
version number CxDy.


 --
Frederic Wronecki
France Telecom, Paris, France
mailto:frederic -dot- wronecki -at- wanadoo -dot- fr

                  TECHWR-L List Information
To send a message about technical communication to 2500+ list readers,
E-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot-  Send administrative commands
         ALL other questions or problems concerning the list
       should go to the listowner, Eric Ray, at ejray -at- ionet -dot- net -dot- 

                  TECHWR-L List Information
To send a message about technical communication to 2500+ list readers,
E-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot-  Send administrative commands
         ALL other questions or problems concerning the list
       should go to the listowner, Eric Ray, at ejray -at- ionet -dot- net -dot-