We give the name "edition" to a corrected file made from an existing PG text. For example, if someone points out some typos in our file of "War and Peace", we will fix them, and, if enough are found to warrant a "new edition", then instead of just replacing the file wrnpc10.txt, we may make a new file wrnpc11.txt, and leave the original alone. A new edition is always filed under the same year and etext number as the original--it's just an update.
We give the name "version" to a completely independent e-text made from the same original book, but a different source. For example, Homer's Odyssey was translated by many different people, but they all worked from the same book. The translations by Lang, Butler, Pope and Chapman are very different, but they all come from the same root.
Thus, these are all "versions" of Homer's Odyssey. We give them all the same basename--dyssy--and each gets a new number, but we keep the original basename, and add a letter to the filename to indicate that they are "versions" of the same original book:
| dyssy10.txt | Butler's Translation |
| dyssy10a.txt | Butcher & Lang's Translation |
| dyssy10b.txt | Pope's Translation |
The differences don't have to be as extreme as this for us to create a new version. "Clotelle"/"Clotel", for example, was a book published multiple times in English by William Wells Brown, and each time, he changed the text. We preserve three different texts of the same book as different versions: clotl10 clotl10a and clotl10b.