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The last time around, I wrote about why you need version control. This time around it’s about some of the tools available.

Trust me… there are quite a few. Unfortunately, there’s not enough space or time to explore them in the span of a single blog post. Instead I’ll just cover the ones I’ve used: Microsoft Word, Visual Source Safe, and Subversion.

Cool?

But first, let’s recap how we got here:

• Writing is an inexact science. We write. And rewrite. And rewrite again. And not always for the better. Version control keeps track of every revision… right down to every last save if you want it to.¹
• Microsoft Word, as great as it is,² has some enormous flaws, chief among them is its instability. Version control can help you mitigate the damage when Word decides to flush your work down the crapper.
• Developing and implementing naming conventions and filing systems to keep your work organized can be a major chore. Version control virtually removes the need for such things entirely.

And, now, let’s get to it…

Microsoft Word

Already, within the confines of this series, I’ve both slagged and sung the praises of Microsoft’s flagship office app. And we both know that any of either that the venerable word processor gets is probably justified.

For every crash, there’s a way that Word—especially since Word 2000—really helped you roundly kick a document’s ass. It’s truly a program that’s useful for more than just writing letters.

In fact, I routinely create full-length books using nothing but Word because it formats my text, headers, footers, tables of contents, and indexes with ease. I figure if I use about 15 percent of Word’s features, then the average person uses considerably less than that.

In other words, there’s a lot more we can do with Microsoft Word but we choose not to learn. Understanding this, most people probably don’t know about the feature called Versions.

Using this feature Word will allow you to save multiple versions of a document in progress with a few clicks of your mouse. On the tool bar,³ just go to File → Versions… and Word opens the Versions window, as shown here:

Click Save Now…, enter some comments, and Word keeps track of the document’s versioning for you.

But not without a price. And a heavy one at that.

What Microsoft doesn’t tell you is that each these versions is kept within the same document… Word simply hides the previous versions so you can’t see them.

This means your file becomes bloated and cumbersome. And gigantically problematic for Word—and you—in the long run.

I’ve lost entire version trails because the latest version of a document I was working on simply got too large… as in “fifteen times its normal file size” too large.

When that happened, Word simply did the software equivalent of throwing a rod.

Poof.

There went days worth of versions. Gone. Sort of defeats the purpose of saving versions, no? Luckily, I still had my latest and greatest working version.

I’m not saying you can’t use this feature. It works well enough if the project is small. But there’s no way in hell I’d recommend using it for your manuscript.

Microsoft Visual SourceSafe

Now this is a piece of software. Designed for all sorts of projects—large or small—that require you to keep your source files secure, Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe can handle just about anything you throw at it.

It uses a robust, yet compact, database that captures each and every version of a virtually limitless number of files. At my day job, we have years and years worth of source code stored inside our SourceSafe.

If we need to roll back code or a document to a version from 2000… we can. And with just a few mouse clicks.

Easy, peasy.

However, this comes at a heavy price, too: the one on the box.

Order this from Amazon and it’ll set you back $500.

If you can afford it, or if you think you need something this powerful, go ahead and get SourceSafe. Otherwise, I suggest you save your money.

Subversion

Last up is an ultra-compact bit of software that gives you the flexibility of the versioning capabilities native to Microsoft Word along with much of the power that comes in the Redmond Beast’s Visual SourceSafe.

What’s more is that Subversion is open source and 100 percent free of charge. The sound of that alone is enough to make most people sit up and take notice.

What I like best about Subversion is its small footprint: I have a cheapo USB thumbdrive with a whopping 64 megabytes of capacity that serves as my writing-project repository (Subversion’s term for database), and I’m not in any danger of running out of room on the stick any time soon.

And just so you know, that’s each and every one of my writing projects… not just my current novel-in-progress.

Further, because my Subversion repository lives on a thumbdrive, I can take it anywhere I can plug in to a computer with a USB 2.0 port. It’s really helpful when I’m researching at the library. I just pop in the drive and write notes to a simple text editor. Add the notes to the repository and they’re now under source control, too.

If you prefer, and if you have suitable Web hosting, you can also install your repository on at your Web host. It’s something I prefer not to do, if for no other reason than I’m the one who’s in charge of my thumbdrive.

No offense to the nice people at DreamHost, but I trust myself more than I trust them.⁴

In any case, if you haven’t figured it out by now, Part 3 is the post where I teach you how to install a Subversion repository on your own thumbdrive.⁵

Stick around, folks. It’ll be here soon.

Sphere: Related Content

1. Depending on which software you use and how you configure it. More about this in Part 3. [⇑]
2. I really mean that. I think it’s a wonderful tool… especially Word 2007. [⇑]
3. This process is for people using Word 2000 or Word 2003. Microsoft removed the feature in Word 2007. [⇑]
4. For good measure, though, I do back up my repository to a GMail account. I strongly recommend you do something similar. [⇑]
5. Or desktop, laptop, iPod, or any other USB storage device. [⇑]

**Welcome everyone from ProBlogger!**

If you’ve been using the Internet for longer than, say, ten minutes, you’ve definitely seen these sorts of Top 5 lists at least fifty thousand times. They almost always over-promise and under-deliver—big time.

Well, my faithful… this one isn’t much different!

The fact is, there isn’t anything I can pass along to you that you haven’t used yourself or read about somewhere else already.

It’s just that headlines like these are super-magnetic. And the content that follows them is perfect for the Web: short, digestible chunklets you can skim through while you’re busy avoiding work.

The other reason I’m posting this is that I’m giving ProBlogger Darren Rowse’s latest group writing project a go and the rules of the game dictate the format.

So enough of my blather already… here’re are the Top 5 FREE Software Programs Every Writer Should Have.

Read the rest of this entry »

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