File naming conventions?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Jennifer Tibbs reports: <<our naming conventions were confusing students. A
file name looked like this: TibbsJS_rev_00.doc for the original version.
Every time someone edited the document, the number should be incremented.>>

Nobody has the time or desire to look up arcane instructions on how to name
a file. With modern operating systems, you have a minimum of 32 characters
(Mac OS 9.x and earlier) and something like 100+ for Windows and (I believe)
Unix. Moreover, in most GUIs, you can rename a file without having to retype
the whole name simply by selecting the name of an existing file in the list
of existing files; the full file name appears in the Name field, and you
need only edit the last part. (You might not want to encourage this unless
you have a good backup system in place, because it's easy to accidentally
overwrite older files this way if you're tired, careless, or in a hurry.)

So first off, don't get hung up on keeping the file name short and cryptic.
The whole purpose of allowing file names is to make the contents of the file
clear. Second, without content- or version-control software, you really
can't rely on people to reliably name files correctly and consistently, and
that being the case, make it as easy as possible to name them correctly but
provide oversight. That is, someone should take responsibility for
monitoring file names. In the "real world" outside school, the odds are good
that that someone would be the project manager, and it probably wouldn't
hurt to include this role in your teaching.

<<We wanted to preserve each version of the document for practice with
editing and using FTP (to download and upload resumes to the appropriate
places for the authors to look at)... We had a terrible time trying to teach
everyone and manage the files at the same time. I am looking for, from all
of you, suggestions for how to redo the file naming system to simplify it
for this
year's students.>>

One simple approach might be as follows: Each day, before the students start
work, the project manager should create a new directory with the current
day's date. Move the previous day's files into an Archives directory that is
"read only" (you need the network Admin's help to set this up) so that your
old files are protected against accidents. Next, copy all the most recent
versions of the files to the new day's directory and rename them. Given that
all files now "live" in dated directories, you can eliminate the need for a
"version number" because the versions are clearly communicated by the
directory name*. To identify changes _within_ a day, insist that students
append their name or initials to the file name (e.g., Filename--Geoff's
edit.doc) and publicly flog the ones who don't comply. <g>

* You can't rely on the time stamps ("last modified" dates) for files,
because a file modified several days ago can be opened again, then saved
with today's date, eliminating the previous day's copy.

This approach is tedious, and creates tons of files. So here's a simpler way
to accomplish much the same goal: First, configure each copy of Word by
entering the user's name in the Preferences/Options settings. Turn on the
Versions function (under the File menu), select "Automatically save a
version on close", and enable revision tracking. From this point onwards,
each person who edits the file will have their name associated with the
revisions, and Word will save a dated version of the file _inside the same
document_ when the editor/reviewer leaves the file. You can return to any
previous version at any time simply by opening the File menu, selecting
Versions, and double-clicking on the desired version. (Versions are
displayed with the name of the reviewer and date/time, so they're easy to
work with.)

***NOTE***: There is some debate about the reliability of the versioning
function in Word; my personal suspicion is that this uses a form of the
dreaded (inevitably disastrous) "fast save" option. Though I haven't yet
been bitten by problems with versioning, it's probably because I don't trust
it, and take the following precaution: Periodically (every couple days or
every dozen reviewers), archive the current version of the file (as
described above), then open the Versions dialog, delete _all_ versions, then
save the file with a new name before you continue working. This cleans out
the accumulated detritus and seems to forestall file corruption.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

"It's one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation.
That's part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father.
Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows
'09."--David Brin, _Kiln People_

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