While we could have a way of identifying specific revisions (using a timestamp or some sort of hash), I don't think that we'll ever have full control over this. As Laurent correctly pointed out, there are many resources in a Web Publication, including images/videos/stylesheets that could be updated on a regular basis. It's very unlikely that anyone will update a WP manifest and indicate a new "release" whenever such a resource is updated. Even for the primary resources of a publication, if a resource is shared across a large number of publications (Jiminy identified one use case for that) I really doubt that each WP manifest should and would also get updated at the same time. In EPUB, the resources are archived in a package and can be completely controlled. On the Web where the resources are spread across at least multiple URIs (and most of the time multiple domains), such a control is impossible and the notion of an identifier per "release" is at best a hint, never a requirement or something that you can completely trust. Rather than being a key component of an identifier (like in EPUB), this could be mostly useful in order to know when a packaged or cached publication should be updated.
Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2017 23:50:44 UTC