Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.programmer:2942 comp.sys.mac:22161
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!tomj
From: tomj@oakhill.UUCP (Tom Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Inside Mac
Summary: Take a tip from the Military
Keywords: Loose-Leaf Updates
Message-ID: <1631@oakhill.UUCP>
Date: 28 Oct 88 21:26:10 GMT
References: <1138@lzsc.ATT.COM> <549@poseidon.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: tomj@oakhill.UUCP (Tom Johnson)
Organization: Motorola Inc., Austin Tx.
Lines: 24

Many moons ago, I was in the Air Farce (sic).  Air Force manuals are both
one of the BEST and WORST things about the service.  All manuals are loose
leaf, and updates are handled by supplying new pages as required, with
changed material denoted by a heavy black line in the margin.  Additionally,
each update comes with a "List of Effective Pages" page.  While the new CONTENT
pages are many times replaced, it is required that each manual keep all
copies of all "List of Effective Pages" pages.  Many times, we kept the
replaced pages (when the changes were other than grammatical) in a separate
binder, so that if we wanted to "back track" a problem, we had all relevant
documentation from ALL revisions back to day 1, while the "main" manual
contained only the most recent info.  Replacement pages were always marked
in the upper border with not only the page number, but also the revision
number of that page (which made it easy to check the "effective page" pages
to determine what the last rev of that page was).  This system WORKS, but 
requires a little effort on the part of the user.  In the service, the effort
to maintain about 100 manuals amounted to a few minutes (up to say 1/2 hour)
per revision, and we were graded on whether or not all manuals were "up to
snuff".  This system is used in the service to keep manuals ranging from
"How to type a proper letter" to "How to service a B1 Radar System" completely
up-to-date.--(the bad part is that they are all written for 6th graders to
read :>).

--Tom Johnson, Motorola   |Disclaimer: A single glance will tell that I
  tomj@oakhill.UUCP	  |            obviously don't speak for Motorola.