Versioning and Governance
Why governance matters
The Saber Standard is intended to function as a long-term choreography notation standard.
To remain useful across schools, instructors, communities, and future releases, the standard needs:
- stable terminology
- documented revisions
- controlled updates
- version tracking
- clear distinction between official and contributed material
This page defines the current governance model for the Saber Standard.
Current standard version
| Version | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | Historical foundation | Original assembled SaberCraft guide and system draft |
| v2.0 | Active | Current public standard, hosted at standard.sabercraft.org |
v2.0 is a finished, stable release. Saberists, instructors, and schools can teach and notate from it today; it is not a draft in progress.
Governance philosophy
The Saber Standard is designed to evolve carefully.
The goal is to allow:
- improvement
- expansion
- experimentation
- community participation
without constantly breaking compatibility between schools and choreography archives.
Whenever possible:
- notation should remain readable across versions
- terminology changes should be documented
- major structural changes should be deliberate
Stewardship
The Saber Standard is currently:
- developed by the SaberCraft community
- maintained by Lumina Federation LLC
- published publicly at standard.sabercraft.org
SaberCraft serves as the founding school and original implementation community of the standard.
Official versus community material
Not all choreography or notation material carries the same authority level.
| Category | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Official | Approved baseline Saber Standard material |
| Extended | Official expansions beyond the beginner baseline |
| Community | Independent or contributed material written using the Saber Standard |
This structure allows schools and instructors to innovate without immediately changing the official baseline.
Change philosophy
Small improvements are expected over time.
Examples include:
- clarifying terminology
- improving diagrams
- refining beginner explanations
- documenting notation edge cases
- expanding examples
Large structural changes should be approached carefully.
Examples include:
- changing target numbering
- redefining notation grammar
- breaking compatibility with older choreography
- changing table structure conventions
Public reference model
The official public reference for the standard currently includes:
- GitHub repository
- Markdown source files
- version-controlled history
- public documentation site
- downloadable releases in the future
This structure is intended to improve transparency, preservation, and long-term maintainability.