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Version control for writers

Rachel Greenham has written a very good tutorial called 'Subversion for Writers.' If you aren't a coder, you probably aren't familiar with the popular version control system, Subversion. It allows you to work collaboratively with folks on the same files (in most cases code) without fear of overwriting the work of others. Subversion tracks all the changes made to those files, and who did them, and allows you to rollback changes or branch off into different directions with having to worry about mucking up the entire project.

Rachel, being a geeky writer, immediately saw the potential of using Subversion for writers. Her tutorial walks you through what Subversion is, how to install it on your Mac (if you're running Leopard it is already installed), some apps you can use to make interacting with Subversion easier, and how to track your changes. To be clear, this method is not for everyone. If you aren't comfortable with the Terminal you should steer clear of this, and if you don't revise the same document over and over again you'll have no need for it. That being said, it is a very clever idea.

[via the Hog Bay Software Forums]

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Rachel Greenham has written a very good tutorial called 'Subversion for Writers.' If you aren't a coder, you probably aren't familiar with...
 

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izahn78

SVK is a much better solution for this sort of thing, because you don't have to manually add, delete, move, or rename files. Just move things around as you normally would, and use the import option when you commit. See
http://svk.bestpractical.com/view/HomePage

April 21 2008 at 5:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CaptSaltyJack

I've tried several SVN clients for Mac OS, and I don't like any of them. I think the interfaces are non-intuitive and clunky. I AM looking forward to this one though:

http://www.versionsapp.com/

April 20 2008 at 5:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
msrt1

What's wrong with just regularly saving a copy of the document?

For the 'casual' writer, working alone, Subversion seems a little over-engineered, particularly for people who don't know what a command line is.

Obviously, collaborative code writing would be different.

April 19 2008 at 9:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rachel

I didn't mention the TextMate subversion integration for three reasons:

1: I'd forgotten about it. :-) I knew it was there but never got into the habit of using it.

2: I wanted to describe a solution that was editor-agnostic, not least because:

3: This was written (in only about 2-3 hours) in response to a thread in the WriteRoom forums, and the link only posted - by me - there. It would be rude to basically imply "you need to switch to TextMate" - itself another pay-for editor.

I switched to TextMate during the article, as I said in the article, because it was the sort of thing that's easier done there. It also demonstrates the editor-agnosticism. :-) Certainly if you do use a heterogenous writing environment it's a valid thing to do, but then in that case you're probably not my target audience. :-)

April 19 2008 at 5:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mtts

Recommending GIT is cruel. Until quite recently it didn't work at all on a Mac (and only barely on Windows) and even now installing it is nothing to sneeze at.

Compare that to Subversion: installed by default (or easily installed using an install package) and once it's installed it takes only a few easily learned terminal commands to use it.

For non-techies, Subversion is the obvious choice.

BTW, I'm not a writer, but I use Subversion as a general backup tool (but then I do have my own server to play with). To make that work smoothly, I installed the Python svn bindings and wrote a small script that automatically checks in new files. Not for everybody, I guess, but if you're interested it's here:

http://tech.rommelhok.com/2008/03/19/automating-subversion-with-pysvn/

April 19 2008 at 4:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JamieD

I would not recommend any mac users install SCPlugin, it will slow down your entire machine significantly. The project has not been updated for several years. Far better alternatives would be SVNx or ZigVersion, they do not offer the same finder integration as SCPlugin but do not suffer from the same system slowdown. Another alternative would be the Textmate subversion bundle which would be more of a replacement for SCPlugin but only works within textmate.

April 18 2008 at 8:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to JamieD's comment
Rachel

JamieD: Hm. I've not noticed any - well, noticeable slow-down with SCPlugin (and I would). Then again I'm running a version from 20 Dec 2007, so maybe it's newer than yours. ;-)

The only peeve I have isn't the developers' fault: With the advent of Leopard, the whole thing is shoved into a "More" submenu off the Finder contextual menu. Minor annoyance though. More than half the time I keep a Terminal open and use svn directly anyway. :-)

April 18 2008 at 8:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul

There are some GUI front ends for Subversion, and at least one that runs on the Mac: RapidSVN.

http://www.rapidsvn.org/

So if you are afraid of the command line, you can ignore it!

I'd also like to recommend Write Boards in Backpack by 37 Signals. You can share documents there and keep all revisions, and identify who made which change when.

April 18 2008 at 7:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Paul's comment
Rachel

I know about the GUI front ends. I demonstrate the usage of SCPlugin in the howto. I only mentioned RapidSVN briefly because I don't use it myself. It's a clear stub of a section that's waiting to be expanded though, especially as it's multiplatform. (And as a price for that some of its Mac user interface work is a bit scrappy-looking.)

However, with neither of those can you *create* a new repository. There's a menu option for it in RapidSVN but if you click on it you just get a dialogue saying you need to open a terminal and use svnadmin create... :-)

April 18 2008 at 7:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
HalibetLector

Cute. Google docs does something similar, I believe.

April 18 2008 at 7:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to HalibetLector's comment
Julian Montez

Google Docs is for the casual, easy-as-possible crowd. Subversion (although I would recommend Git over it) provides a hell of a lot more control and management of any type of coding, or in this case writing, project.

Version control software allows commits, and highly organized distributions of code/writing to many people efficiently, and without the fear of losing everything in a hard-drive failure, etc.

I guess for the casual user, this doesn't seem to make a difference for your needs, but from a programmers perspective, it's probably a hell of a lot easier to implement something that you use much during coding projects.

April 18 2008 at 8:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
HalibetLector

The article was written for a casual user who just wants to save revisions of his writing. With that in mind, google docs works just as well and with a lot less setup. Admittedly, you don't have to be online with svn since the article creates an svn repository on the local machine, whereas that's not an option with google docs (at least until it starts working with google gears).

I'm not dissing the article, it's clever and something I might try myself, as I already have access to an svn repository.

April 19 2008 at 12:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
adam

For someone like a writer it seems like Git would make a lot more sense since you can commit offline. Even if the writer was hosting their repository locally git is much much easier to get up and going once you've installed it. Compare executing 'git init' with all the steps you need to setup a subversion repo and git is the clear winner.

April 18 2008 at 7:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to adam's comment
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