TimeDrawer: document versioning before Leopard

TimeDrawer looks like a very interesting document versioning utility that gives you a preview of Leopard's forthcoming Time Machine functionality. It installs as a system preference and "stores your files everytime you update them." It allows you to go back and visually ascertain the differences in previous versions with an Expose-like modal interface (though obviously a far cry from Time Machine's groovy out-of-this-world thing). You activate the interface with a contextual menu, so you can see changes in files on your desktop or within a given folder, etc.

There have been some previous document versioning applications like Versomatic, but TimeDrawer's interface looks very slick. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine TimeDrawer will last long once Leopard is released (except maybe for those who stick with Tiger, which it requires). On the positive side, TimeDrawer does not require an external drive like Time Machine.

TimeDrawer is now in beta and is a free download from ONERIVER software

[via MacDevCenter]

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Source: http://www.oneriver.jp/JKR/

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TimeDrawer looks like a very interesting document versioning utility that gives you a preview of Leopard's forthcoming Time Machine...

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Masatoshi Nishikata

>JeffDM
Hi. I am the developer of TimeDrawer. I started making this program AFTER knowing Time Machine. After hearing about Time Machine, I wanted it on my Tiger and something that does not require external drive and keeps backup EVERYTIME you save files not once a day.

Please note that I am not a professional programer and making program is my passion. There is no sunk cost because shareware fee is not enough to support my life.

I am a patent writer and in Tiger, I was frustrated how Apple was ignoring us writers. Spotlight cannot show file's text preview even though it can slideshow pictures. So I made a free software called SpotInside.
http://www.oneriver.jp/SpotInside/

I haven't used Leopard yet, but it is not hard to imagine they agian igores writers. TimeDrawer can show how you have changed your text graphically (not only text. actually any type of document that has text content). This is the main feature of this software. That's "for there rest of us".

August 12 2007 at 12:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Janeiro

Time Machine can be used on internal drive and even partition

July 29 2007 at 8:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

izahn78

This looks really interesting, but I chickened out. There is very little documentation for this app, and I'm just not comfortable letting it do things with my files with no idea how it's doing it.

For the past month I've been using svk to make revision-controlled backups of my documents folder. It's not quite trivial to get this set up, but once set up I can keep things backed up with a single terminal command. See my post at http://izahn.homedns.org:81/dpsy/dpweblog/archive/2007/07/16/subversion-svk for details.

July 28 2007 at 9:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Is TimeDrawer going to remain a free program?

I'd have to say that the developers of these two packages must have understood that their product wouldn't be as much in demand with Leopard. It's possible that they had much of their work done before WWDC06, even then, it's a sunk cost, they must have decided that they would make more (or lose less) by continuing rather than stopping.

They can probably cater to niche needs that Time Machine won't touch. While the dominant player being "good enough" tends to hurt alternatives, I'm glad there are alternatives.

With respect to the actual interface, I think Time Machine is kind of gimmicky and doesn't fit as well with the rest of the OS in my opinion.

July 28 2007 at 2:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply