TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Tracking revisions in online help? From:"Susan W. Gallagher" <SGallagher -at- akonix -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 24 Aug 2001 09:38:43 -0700
> --Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
> geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
> "User's advocate" online monthly at
> www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
>
> "How are SF writers like technical writers? Well, we both
> write about the
> things we imagine will happen in the future!"--Sue Gallagher
LOL! Hey! I'm a sig!!! ;-)
In an offline conversation about version control yesterday, sumbuddy
said that VC caused major problems with OLHelp because it takes forty
two forevers to check in and out. This is true. Lemme 'splain...
Version control systems work differently for text files than they
do for binaries. For text files, they create a delta (just store
the changes) from one version of the file to the next. Some of them
store the whole original and store deltas after that. Some of them
store the last version in its entirety and compute deltas of what's
gone before. There's a slight difference in performance, in check-in
v. check-out, but with today's processors, it's moot.
For binaries, they store the whole thing. Creating a delta would be
*way* too time consuming and disk space is cheaper than time. You
can usually specify how many versions of a binary to store so that
the storage system doesn't grow tootoo big.
Where the problem comes in is in machine-generated text files, like
the .rtf we use for online help. These puppies are as time consuming
to store as the binary they represent. (Have you ever looked inside
an .rtf file??? Not a pretty sight! And in the early days of OLHelp,
you usually hadda bug fix at that level! Yuck!)
So, if you generally have to check your help files in and out overnight,
investigate whether you have the option to treat the .rtf as a binary
and store the whole thing. You won't be sacrificing that much disk space,
and your in&out processes will move a lot faster.
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
