Version numbering (was: citing IVOA standards)

[Mark Taylor]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2008, Norman Gray wrote:

> What certainly is _very_ confusing about the current versioning scheme 
> <http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/Notes/DocStd/Procedures-20040425.html#WorkingDrafts> 
> is that the pre-REC and post-REC version numbers are not continuous: thus 
> WD-1.0 is a different document from REC-1.0.

Gosh is that true?  I kind of had that impression but thought it was
so weird that I must have misunderstood the scheme.  It is certainly
very unhelpful.

> So, I propose:
>
> * All Recommendations have a version number n.m
> * All pre-Recommendation documents, including internal drafts, formal 
> working drafts and proposed recommendations, have a version number yyyymmdd, 
> with the status indicated by a prefix.
>
> Thus for a given document, we will have DRAFT-20080101, WD-20080201, 
> PR-20080301 and either REC-1.0 or plain '1.0'.  That scheme is monotonic (so 
> satisfies properties (a) and (b)), and makes the document's status explicit 
> rather than implicit.

I like this proposal.

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/