I seriously can't believe the section numbers are so important to you.
Of course not. I wouldn't have cared about numbering except that while I found the content of the devguide very good I had difficulty navigating it. I wanted to jump in to something like "complex mapping" but I found it difficult to figure out where one topic ended and another began. The numbering in the .NOT version solved this problem nicely. Maybe more whitespace, pagebreaks and a bigger difference in font sizes in the headings would work too.
Anyway I'll stop whining now and RTFM with or without the numbers. Don't forget to check out the Wiki over Docbook idea from my last mail though ;=) Ciao, Richard