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Subject:Re: Alternatives to numbering, take II From:Mark Magennis <markmagennis -at- YAHOO -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 9 Aug 1999 08:23:37 -0700
>From what I remember, Joanne said that the purpose of numbering
was the identification of sections during tech support calls.
This identity numbering has nothing to do with the information
structure, so a structural scheme such as 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc
is not necessary.
Presumably, sections could just as easily be identified with
non-contiguous numbers such as 1, 53, 21, etc. or even names
such as "Fred", "Alice", "Luigi" etc. and the identifier would
still fulfil it's purpose.
You might therefore want to avoid using the ugly and long winded
structural scheme and instead, attach shorter identifiers,
created using a scheme nominated by tech support. These needn't
be included as part of the section headings. They could appear
in small coloured (or grey) type above or below the section
headings or in the margin, in such a way as they will be easily
ignored by readers until they need to quote them to tech
support. They wouldn't need to appear in the table of contents
either.
Mark
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