[Bf-docboard] Serious Issue: Versioning - Proposal

[Tobias Regenbrecht]

Hallo,

I'm really concerned about the way to proceed with the Users Manual, when 
Blender v.240 will come out.

There are multiple sections that need to be heavily updated, in other sections 
the images have to change. 

Updating the images will break the translated versions of the manual - at best 
the version numbers in the page headers won't be correct.

As far as I can tell, we don't have any kind of versioning system. So I would 
like to make a proposal:

1) We may have a multi version manual. 
2) A manual page for an older version of blender should be left intact, 
including the images. 
3) How to proceed when the text of a page needs to be updated:
a) Create a new page "NameOfThePage-VersionNumber"
b) Copy the contents of the old page to this new page. (So at least the 
version history of the old page will stay intact, and the TOC always points 
to the current version.)
c) Create a link from the old page to the new page. 
d) Images that shall replace older images have to bear a version number.

An Example:
- Page: "Manual/PartI/Your First Animation in 30 plus 30 Minutes Part I" 
- Create New Page: "Manual/PartI/Your First Animation in 30 plus 30 Minutes 
Part I-2.31"
- Copy contents
- Change "Manual/PartI/Your First Animation in 30 plus 30 Minutes Part I"
- Add a link to "Manual/PartI/Your First Animation in 30 plus 30 Minutes Part 
I-2.31"

One could easily create a template "Another Version available (v2.31)" to link 
to the older version.
The template could be called:
{{Version_History|2.37a}}

<table style="font-size:small;font-style:italic;" padding:3px; width="100%">
<tr>
  <td valign="top" align="right" width="100%">Another Version available 
('''[[{{PAGENAME}}-{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]}''')</td>
</tr>
</table>

-------------------------------------

With kind regards
-- 
T. Regenbrecht