[Framers] Fwd: Managing Versions of documentation simultaneously

[Robert Lauriston]

The way I have things set up on Paligo, when we ship, say, release
1.2, I branch the 1.2 doc to create the 1.3 doc, and  update the
version number variable in the 1.3 doc to reflect the new number.

At that point, all the topics are the same. If I generate the 1.3 doc,
it's identical to the 1.2 doc except that all of the version number
references say 1.3.

For a  new feature, I add a topic to 1.3, and it appears only in that doc.

When I have a correction to a topic that applies to both 1.2 and 1.3,
I make the change in either one, and both docs are updated.

When I have a change that applies only to 1.3, I branch the topic and
make the change in the 1.3 version.

When I have a change that applies to both branches of a branched topic
(fairly rare), I can make the change in one and reuse the relevant
paragraph(s) in the other. Sometimes the paragraphs are already reused
so I just make the change in one place.

This approach greatly reduces the amount of work required to maintain
docs for multiple releases. It also reduces the likelihood of errors.