TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
In one past life solar revolutions ago, SW development used something
called PVCS. In a past life many moons ago, my European employer
switched from Visual Source Safe to something called PVCS. The two PVCS
things were very different.
These are my humble opinions:
For documentation, SS was better and easier to manage. It was easier to
get documents in and out. It was easier to create new documents. Its
downside was disk space and its Microsoft history.
The PVCS that we got (this may or may not be the same product) was
overblown. It was purchased primarily for SW development and
documentation got lumped into the conversion. However, it was overblown
for even what software development wanted to do. We had problems with
permissions and doing fundamental things. It was a pain getting new
documents in and out. It took forever; it had to process what you wanted
to put in, create its own scripts, then you had to run the scripts. It's
not like you could edit the same scripts to run on a different
directory. It took forever just to check things back in, and out. But it
was supposedly more reliable.
I could operate SS using batch files. I got it to do a bunch of stuff
automatically. The PVCS that we got was not as friendly for doing batch
stuff.
It also had overkill in how it viewed things and found things. Lots of
view windows that didn't always update with what you were trying to do.
My employer was Austrian, so very German. They wanted what they could
get from this big tool... which IMHO was bigger than what their needs
would ever be.
If it wasn't for the fact that SS's databases were getting too big for
our servers (documentation and marketing were using it for image files
and non-code related files), our documentation group would have been
much happier staying on SS. The lesson to be learned was that if our
company would have created multiple SS databases, it would have been
more efficient for all involved parties.
HTH,
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WIETHORN,MIKE (Non-HP-Roseville,ex1)
> [mailto:mike_wiethorn -at- non -dot- hp -dot- com]
> Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 4:59 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: PVCS/content management
>
>
> I am exploring methods of documentation version control for a rapidly
> growing project. I have looked at CVS/RCS and Visual Source
> Safe. I am
> also looking at something called PVCS.
>
> Does anyone have any experience using any of these content management
> methods; and, if so, what are some of the
> advantages/disadvantages of each?
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.comhttp://www.miramo.com +++
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
