Comments on: Advanced document editing with Subversion version control http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/1599/ Blog on Open source, Digital humanities, and Sanskrit philology Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:57:16 +0000 hourly 1 By: Manuel Batsching http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/1599/comment-page-1/#comment-2051 Manuel Batsching Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:42:51 +0000 http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/?p=1599#comment-2051 That is indeed an important topic! So many people I know, help themselves with frequently saving their files under a different name to keep track on the version history. Or they send emails to themselves or to other people they want to collaborate with. In any case I would call that "versions out of control" rather than "version control". I think what scares many people off from CVS, Subversion and the like, is that these things are quite complicated to handle on the command line (if you are not geek by nature). Also getting a Subversion repository to run online (which would give you some backup functionality) is not that easy in my eyes. Even further Subversion may offer a bit too much functionality for people just working with texts. I think people who want a basic version tracking and online backup functionality, which is easy to install, costs nothing and does it's job invisibly in the background, may be happy with Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com). And another convenient Subversion GUI for Linux is RabbitVCS (http://rabbitvcs.org/), which also comes with a plugin for GNOME's Nautilus, as not everybody finds KDE that kool ;-D. It is said to be inspired from TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/), which became famous among Windows users. That is indeed an important topic! So many people I know, help themselves with frequently saving their files under a different name to keep track on the version history. Or they send emails to themselves or to other people they want to collaborate with. In any case I would call that “versions out of control” rather than “version control”.
I think what scares many people off from CVS, Subversion and the like, is that these things are quite complicated to handle on the command line (if you are not geek by nature). Also getting a Subversion repository to run online (which would give you some backup functionality) is not that easy in my eyes. Even further Subversion may offer a bit too much functionality for people just working with texts.

I think people who want a basic version tracking and online backup functionality, which is easy to install, costs nothing and does it’s job invisibly in the background, may be happy with Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com).

And another convenient Subversion GUI for Linux is RabbitVCS (http://rabbitvcs.org/), which also comes with a plugin for GNOME’s Nautilus, as not everybody finds KDE that kool ;-D. It is said to be inspired from TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/), which became famous among Windows users.

]]> By: Somadeva Vasudeva http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/1599/comment-page-1/#comment-1047 Somadeva Vasudeva Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:27:02 +0000 http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/?p=1599#comment-1047 Nice to see these tips. I have just started using Git (installed with macports) and am happy so far (make sure(!!!) you don't ever accidentally upload files with non-Unix linebreaks or you will regret it). On OS X there are some useful helper applications that make it easier to get started (apart from a good terminal app like visor (http://visor.binaryage.com/)) I have used GitX and it is a good tool to see where files end up (http://gitx.frim.nl/), I have not yet tried gitnub (http://wiki.github.com/Caged/gitnub/) but it looks helpful too. BBEdit always had excellent Subversion support, but not much for Git yet. Nice to see these tips. I have just started using Git (installed with macports) and am happy so far (make sure(!!!) you don’t ever accidentally upload files with non-Unix linebreaks or you will regret it). On OS X there are some useful helper applications that make it easier to get started (apart from a good terminal app like visor (http://visor.binaryage.com/)) I have used GitX and it is a good tool to see where files end up (http://gitx.frim.nl/), I have not yet tried gitnub (http://wiki.github.com/Caged/gitnub/) but it looks helpful too. BBEdit always had excellent Subversion support, but not much for Git yet.

]]> By: Michael Slouber http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/1599/comment-page-1/#comment-1012 Michael Slouber Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:43:40 +0000 http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/?p=1599#comment-1012 This seems like a promising prospect for future etext libraries. So many corrupt etexts are very easy to fix locally as one happens upon them, but who wants to spend the time to note each and every change and them send them sporadically to the maintainer? Allowing all users to update each etext as they use them seems ideal to me. Of course you still want to have a system for approving changes, such as an annual review of every change by the maintainer. The editor I use, BBEdit, does keep backups every time you save the file, and I hardly ever use them, but when I do it is because I really need it. It also lets you compare two files to see exactly what the changes were. This seems like a promising prospect for future etext libraries. So many corrupt etexts are very easy to fix locally as one happens upon them, but who wants to spend the time to note each and every change and them send them sporadically to the maintainer? Allowing all users to update each etext as they use them seems ideal to me. Of course you still want to have a system for approving changes, such as an annual review of every change by the maintainer.

The editor I use, BBEdit, does keep backups every time you save the file, and I hardly ever use them, but when I do it is because I really need it. It also lets you compare two files to see exactly what the changes were.

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