[OS X TeX] Version controls for LaTeX book production

[Simon Spiegel]

On 12.11.2007, at 03:47, George Gratzer wrote:

> I do not disagree with Gary, because he writes books jointly with  
> (many) others.
>
> I wrote some 20 book, all of them by myself.  If I want to go back  
> to an earlier version in something, I do not have to explain why. I  
> know. I was stupid.
>
> I also wrote some 250 research papers, most of the joint work, with  
> over 60 co-authors -- with more than one, more than 50 papers each.  
> Here I use a simple system. Each section is owned by a co-author at  
> any one time. When he is finished, the section is passed over to  
> the other author, saying, now you own it. Explanation for the  
> changes are commented and the comments are deleted as soon as the  
> changes are accepted or further changed.

I used svn for my PhD thesis and can only recommend it. Granted, this  
was in the pre TimeMachine days, but I'd still say that the setup is  
useful today with Leopard. I was working on three different machines  
at that time, and svn not only served as versioning and backup system  
but also as a means to synch those machines. IME when you work on  
different computers over a longer amount of time you'll often end up  
with different versions of the same document and suddenly you don't  
know which one is the latest, svn helps you avoiding this. O, and  
Leopard comes with svn pre-installed.

simon


--
Simon Spiegel
Steinhaldenstr. 50
8002 Zürich

Telephon: ++41 44 451 5334
Mobophon: ++41 76 459 60 39

http://www.simifilm.ch

"It will take time to restore chaos." George W. Bush