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Re: Storing RTF documents in a code management system
Subject:Re: Storing RTF documents in a code management system From:dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 May 2002 16:29:32 -0700
Deb Beckett wrote:
>
> Has anyone used CVS or RCS as a repository for their documents?
Yes.
>
> If so, how has this worked for you?
For HTML and text, great--you get full benefit of revision (change) control.
For .doc, .pdf, .gif, and other nontext formats, great--but you store the full copy of every revision.
>
> ... To store a Word document (Word 2000) in CVS/RCS, it must be saved
> as RTF.
Not so--add the .doc file with the -kb flag (keyword: binary). See above.
> 1) Being able to easily check documents in and out
Yep.
> 2) Are you able to merge changes?
Nope--that only works with text files.
> 3) Controlling access of documents (which would really be a process
> we might be able to use)
Nope. CVS is a revision control program; it is pointedly *not* an access control program. Its purpose is to *allow* several people to work on a file at the same time, not to prevent them. (For comparison, SourceSafe is an access control program--it prevents two people from working on the same file at the same time.)
> 4) General feedback regarding the use of RTF documents in this manner?
Haven't done it.
One problem would be if CVS didn't recognize similarities between two versions, and stored the full text of both.
A worse problem would be if CVS *thought* it understood the difference between two versions, but was wrong. That'd be a mess.
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