A very good reminder. I should just bump my numbering from 000 to 0000.
The other thing I was exploring was whether it is ever useful to have structure. It seems useful, but is it a trap, as you said just now?
I suppose I’m just fascinated by the way structure flows up and down. Original JD: very strong case for keeping structure in front of the decimal, and content after (explained well in the Workshop). No mixing. By doing something like this (which is essentially an extension of your header IDs), you are adding structure after the decimal, without adding more depth. Seems like it breaks rules, and yet, aren’t many things in life fluid?
My partner was showing me the healthcare insurance declaration codes she works with. The numbers obviously have structure encoded in them. Also obviously, they thought about the numbering scheme up front, instead of adding things ad-hoc like I was doing here. And yet they choose to have a single list of 5-6 digit numbers, and not a folder hierarchy.
Or product numbers at a grocery wholesaler. Some are longer than others; potatoes are 11, cherry cocktail tomatoes are 321116. And again, related things have numbers close together.
So the question becomes: would one want to keep one’s product list in a Johnny Decimal system, or in a database (or why couldn’t it be both)? I.e. would your index contain 42.10 Product List (containing a spreadsheet or link to database), or 42.010002 Golden Delicious, 42.01003 Royal Gala etc?
(just something to mull over. Ignore if you have more important things to do).