[texworks] Please help!

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 06/04/2014 9:44 PM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> On 2014-04-06 at 18:25:08 -0400, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>   > On 06/04/2014, 5:07 PM, Dona Strauss wrote:
>   > >
>   > > Hi!  I deleted material from a tex file that I had not intended
>   > >     to delete. Is there any way of recovering it?
>   >
>   > Get it from your backup.
>   >
>   > Remember the two laws of computing:
>   >
>   > 1.  Back it up.
>   > 2.  Do it now.
>
> Right.  Seems to be too late now.  A deleted file can probably be
> recovered but a changed file can't because it's overwritten.  Phil
> mentioned "System Restore" which is certainly a Windows tool but I
> don't know what it actually does.
>
> However, what you said sounds reasonable but nobody backups his system
> if it's too inconvenient.  What you said is often easier said than done.

On MacOS it's very easy.  I imagine it's just as easy on Windows with 
the right additional software, but Windows doesn't come with that software.

>
> I strongly recommend to use a version control system.  My favorite is
> Subversion:
>
>    http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/index.html
>
> The advantage of Subversion is that you can submit the current state
> of your files to the repository easily at any time.  If you encounter
> a problem, you can retrieve any revision, not only the last one.

Yes, I use Subversion as well, on Windows, MacOS and Linux.  I back up 
the repositories to my Mac.
>
> Don't worry about the documentation.  It's quite verbose but you don't
> have to know everything explained there in order to use svn efficiently.
>
> On Windows you have to use
>
>    http://tortoisesvn.net
>
> because Windows still lacks a clear concept of input encodings.  The
> rest of the world is using UTF-8 for decades.

I don't think TortoiseSVN is required, but it definitely makes it nice 
to use Subversion.  I wish there were an equivalent on the Mac.

Marcin mentioned Git and Mercurial.  I've never tried Mercurial; I tried 
Git, and really hated it.  Subversion has a simpler model: one central 
repository, every revision with a sequential revision number, instead of 
every checked out copy having its own subset of revisions from a 
not-so-well-defined cloud of revisions.  It's not easy to get 
not-very-technical collaborators to use Subversion; Git was a complete 
failure in this.

Duncan  Murdoch