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This is fine for part tracking (and I probably assumed it
was going to happen anyway when I wrote my reply, perhaps
I was too hasty), but it doesn't address Mat's original
concern, which was that keeping the revisions consistent
might mean skipping revs in one language or another (and
even with P/N's and BOMs, there will still be revs).
I say that saving the end users the confusion of always
having to synchronize their revs when they talk across
languages (i.e., you're in the US, you're talking to a user
in Korea and you each have a copy of the manual in *your*
language that you're referring to, how do you know you're
each looking at revisions of the same P/N that have
identical technical content?) is worth whatever gaps there
may have to be in revision sequencing and whatever hoops
you have to jump through to make it happen. Mr. Jones in
Houston and Mr. Kim in Seoul should never have to worry
about whether Korean A is the equivalent of English C; they
should always know that if they each have Rev C in their
hands when they talk to each other that the technical
content of what they're looking at is in synch.
Gene Kim-Eng
------- Original Message -------
On
Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:58:15 -0400 Dick Margulis ?wrote:
But seriously, forget about version numbers, revision letters, or anything similar. Manuals should have part numbers and be tracked in your BOM system. Every version of every manual in every language gets a unique number that maps it to the actual product it is shipped with and the country it is shipped to. Use the same part number as the directory name where you keep the publication files, and use a database to keep track of what part number corresponds to what search criteria (date, language, model, etc.).
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