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: Document Control Solutions From:Joe Miller <joemiller -at- CANBERRA -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 9 Oct 1998 09:29:03 -0400
On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Dan Lewis <danlew -at- DELPHI -dot- COM> wrote:
>Could Melissa or anyone please explain the difficulty referred to in
>"except designed for binary files." Partly because SourceSafe has been
>suggested for document conrol on this list in the past, we have decided to
>proceed with using it for a large class of our documentation. We are a
>small company and we already use SourceSafe for software version control.
>What are the difficulties associated with using SourceSafe for binary
files?
As I understand it, Dan, SourceSafe saves programming code changes by
saving only the changed lines. A text file that has a change in one line
will probably cause the remainder of the lines in the paragraph to change.
More than that, inserting a new paragraph will cause _all_ of the lines
from that point to the end of the doc to be seen as changed (because the
line numbering has changed), when in fact they have not. This can lead to
massive confusion and chaos, which is why we decided not to use SourceSafe.
Until something better comes along, we're going to continue to save a Zip
file of the earlier releases. Not automatic but it works.
