I have one driver that I am working on now that it is not uncommon for a new firmware of a particular model to insert a new setting which bumps up the number of all of the menus following it. It is hard enough to keep track of which menu settings are being used between vendors, models and firmware versions. It sometimes takes a lot of juggling to make it work. I can't imagine adding menu numbers to the mix.
I can see tickets being opened because the menu numbers don't match, menu numbers are missing (such as the ones for per-channel settings) and/or settings not being in numerical order.
Oh yeah, this pretty much seals it I think. Differing between clones of a given thing isn't something I even thought about, but is an excellent point. Taking the firmware argument, the UV-K5 has multiple threads of firmware development going on, amongst not only the OEM but other community groups, so there's no way that's staying consistent.
TBH, I've always preferred the settings in the software to be more human-friendly than you can usually be on the radio anyway, instead of trying to be faithful to the radio itself. Showing "STE" on the radio due to limited display space is much less helpful than "Squelch Tail Elimination" for example. My experience with most commercial software works this way too.
--Dan