revnumber Required

["John L. Clark" <jlc6@po.cwru.edu>]

My authoring group is working on making the transition to DocBook.
We've been discussing the versioning of documents recently.  Until now,
I had required that when making changes to a document, everyone should
add a revision element with an incremented revnumber child (as well as
the other revision content).  However, my group is uncomfortable with
the use of an internal revnumber, as it does not correspond with the
external numbers applied to files under version control or product
releases.

What I thought I would do, then, was to make the revnumber optional; we
could still refer to revisions by date and the revnumber wouldn't
conflict with other numerical identifiers that we have floating around.
Then I noticed that DocBook requires revnumber.  I was wondering if
someone on the list could provide more insight into this decision, both
so that I can understand the content model better and so that I can
explain it to my group and work around it.

Thanks,

    John L. Clark

PGP signature