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I'm wondering what sort of document versioning software writers might be
using
to control versions of files. I know MS Word has a built in verisioning
component, though I would like to know if ordinary word processing lend them
selves to something like concurrent versioning system (CVS) that many
software
developers use in their shops. A file system based versioning system of the
sort used by software developers allows programmers and engineers to merge
work
they collaborate on. The same type of system would be very useful in word
processing. Does anyone know of any such systems employed in this way in
technical documentation development?
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We use Perforce here for both code and docs, everything is kept in the same
place and the same branching is done so projects can go on in parallel.
Prior to that we used Gnu RCS.
Binaries don't play as nicely as text files, but at the end of the day you
don't need to check in binaries, so don't; even MS Word lets you save
docs in various text formats, so do so (content and styles should always
be seperate, etc.). Better still, use XML (OpenOffice and Frame can be
made to play nicely with XML) or LaTeX.
Christopher Gooch, Technical Author
LightWork Design, Sheffield, UK.
www.lightworkdesign.com
