mlw@ncsc.arpa (Williams) (03/12/88)
Netlandians:
I am looking for the equivalent of a version control system for documentation.
Functionally, the product, which can be targeted for a PC, a UNIX installation,
or a VMS installation, must be able to provide text editing and formatting
capabilities and combine those features with a "successive versions" control
system. Two kinds of output must be available:
(1) current revision and
(2) changes only.
The idea is
(1) enter the original document
(2) print the initial version (user's manual, specification document,
etc.)
(3) as changes are required, enter the updates to the document
(4) print change pages, which should be marked-text (change bars,
possibly underlined/struck-through text that has been changed) and
page-controlled (all changes for a given page are printed on the
specified page...if changes cause page overflow, subsequent pages are
numbered at a lower level of indenture (e.g., page 3 fills up, print
pages 3.1 and 3.2 as required) (5) when a new documentation release is
scheduled, print the current version with full repagination.
If anyone has any clues about systems (public domain or otherwise) that support
a scheme similar to the above scenario, please forward your response as soon as
you possibly can to mlw@ncsc.arpa. I am putting this request on several
interest groups, so I apologize to those of you who see this in different
areas. Also, I do not subscribe to all the interest groups I'm targeting with
this request, so please mail your responses directly to me. Finally, if one of
my destination user groups perceives this as an indication that I am not
familiar with that group and believes that my answer may lie in their group's
archives, please let me know that. Knowing where to look is always important
in a search!
Thanks in advance...
Mark L. Williams
Naval Coastal Systems Center
Panama City, FL 32407
(904)235-5153
mlw@ncsc.arpacuccia%mica.Berkeley.EDU@violet.berkeley.edu (Nick Cuccia) (03/12/88)
Pardon my asking this, but why not just use RCS or SCCS? SCCS is what I
use for revision control of my documentation, but RCS runs on both Unix
and MS-DOS systems. You'd have to ask W. Tichy <tichy@purdue.edu>, the
author of RCS, about whether or not it's available on VMS.
Also, if you check the MINIX source archives on bugs.nosc.mil, you should
be able to find an RCS-like system that somebody distributed on comp.os.minix.
Not sure if it's public domain or just user-supported, it probably wouldn't
be too much effort to port to VMS.
The only difficulty that I see with using something like SCCS or RCS
is setting up a header for the document. When I start editing a document,
I include a file (called {rcs,sccs}.{tex,tr,ps}) that looks like this:
.\"
.\" File Name: %M%
.\" Version: %I%
.\" Last Edited: %E% %U%
.\" SCCS ID: %A%
.\"
(the above is the SCCS header for troff/eqn/tbl/pic/ideal files).
Good Luck,
--Nick
================================================================================
Nick Cuccia
cuccia@mica.berkeley.edu (Internet)
{bellcore,cbosgd,decvax}!ucbvax!mica.berkeley.edu!cuccia (UUCP)
================================================================================Alan_T._Cote.OsbuSouth@xerox.com (03/13/88)
In article <8803111919.AA05447@ncsc.ARPA>, Mark L. Williams <mlw@ncsc.arpa> writes, >I am looking for the equivalent of a version control system for documentation. Please summarize your findings to the net. I'm sure that there are more interested parties than just you and me.