Versioning for Writers

March 2019

Back to Mayfield’s Law

This presentation assumes you are familiar with and following Mayfield’s Law of Data Backups. (See the January 2019 presentation.)

For many writers, their needs are simple.
- The writer is not writing as part of a team.
- The writing is comprised of short documents.
- The writing is linear in nature, where one section is “polished off” fully before the next is begun.
- The writer is satisfied with the content, form, etc., and makes few edits except for spelling and grammar.

If your writing is more complex, you may benefit from the use of data versioning.
According to the Stanford Libraries:
Versioning refers to saving new copies of your files when you make changes so that you can go back and retrieve specific versions of your files later.
If you’ve used computers for very long, you probably are familiar with the tried-and-trusted practice of saving multiple versions of your files under different names.

My story.docx

My story copy.docx

My story copy 2.docx

My story copy 3.docx

:

But instead of using a naming scheme that relies on copy n, you could include descriptive words or phrases in the title, such as pass to editor, draft, final, etc.
Stanford Libraries suggest that: One simple way to version files is to manually save new versions when you make significant changes. This works well if:
- You don't need to keep a lot of different versions.
- Only one person is working on the files.
- The files are always accessed from one location.

An advantage of keeping your master and versions in the Cloud is that they are safe from physical damage.
Another advantage is that they are available on multiple computers.
Cloud-based services include:
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- iCloud
- OneDrive
Some of these (such as Dropbox) permit you to synchronize your files across all of your devices so that you always know you are working on the most recent version.
All of them provide you with the ability to retrieve earlier versions of your work, usually with limits based on the age of the versioned file.
Google Drive also provides you with Google Docs, a word processor that supports simultaneous, collaborative writing on a shared document among members of a team.
Combined with Google Drive’s ability to retrieve older versions – as well as a cost that is hard to beat (free), this makes Google Drive an attractive choice.

Word processors such as Microsoft Word give you the ability to review and modify documents, while tracking those changes and who made them.
This is helpful for editing an article, but for a longer document that may undergo significant changes during its development, this can be clumsy to use, in my opinion.

Draft is a free version control system specifically designed for writers. Saikat Basu puts it this way:
- Nathan Kontny, who is the man behind this writer’s tool, calls Draft a better version control system for writing. He felt shortchanged by Google Docs and doesn’t like the learning curve of Git. Draft is the version control system for writers which removes the complexity and actually makes collaboration smart.
Some of its features:
- It starts with a simple sign-in. The Draft interface is like a minimalist text editor. Simply start writing.
- You can mark changes and save them as drafts. You can have multiple drafts. Changes from one to the next are color coded. You can restore or delete any draft.
- You can compare all your drafts and see how it has changed with time.
- With collaboration, writers work on their version of the document, and the main writer gets to accept or ignore each individual change.
- Import your documents from Dropbox, Evernote, Box, and Google Drive. Changes can be auto-synced back to the cloud services. You can transfer a file via FTP or upload it from your desktop. Image uploads are allowed.
- Draft allows you to leave comments and notes.
- Draft has a Chrome extension that works on any turns any text area on the into an editable block.
- The full features on Draft are well explained on its website.

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
When used with cloud-based service such as GitHub or BitBucket, it can be a very effective tool, especially for team use.
Though it can be used with any kind of documents, it was designed primarily for software developers, to help them keep track of code modifications.
It supports branching and merging on entire, multi-file projects.
- However, it has a very steep learning curve.
- It is mentioned here primarily for completeness.
If you are interested in learning more about it, I suggest you visit the Git website or download the free book, Pro Git, 2nd edition, by Chacon & Straub.