[texworks] [Off-topic] Document Versioning

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

I have to say, without wishing to offend, that I am
viewing the current thread with some amusement.  I
started work with the University of London in 1970,
and at that time the central service used CDC machines
with SCOPE, NOS and NOS/BE. Integrated into the operating
system was the "UPDATE" utility, which through a few
simple commands

	*DELETE 11-13
	*INSERT

and so on would make line-oriented changes to a source
file in a non-destructive way such that, at any time,
a user could revert to an earlier version of his/her
program.

As the Colleges of the University started to become
more independent, the wiser of them bought Digital
Vaxes, running VMS.  A fundamental part of the VMS
file system was the concept of a version number.
Every time a change was made to a file, a new version
was created, and thus the user could, at any time,
revert to any earlier version of his/her file.

Well, the world moved on.  CDCs, UPDATE, VAXes and
VMS were felt be be passé; the more nerdish adopted
Unix and its derivatives, real people adopted PCs.
And integrated version control disappeared.  Almost
overnight.

And it has taken almost thirty years for people to
start to realise what a stupid mistake that was.

** Phil.