Slashdot Mirror
Document Management and Version Control?
Tom wonders: "I am working in a medium-sized software development company. The functional analysts use Microsoft Word to document the specifications, and Sharepoint to publish the documents. However we'd like to improve our process to have better revision control and traceability. We have looked at alternatives like using Wikis, or static HTML documents with CVS. The functional analysts want ease of use, while we developers would like to see high-quality end products, revision control (i.e. tagging & branching of the document base), and traceability features. What tools and document formats do you use and would recommend?"
Shoot the functional analysts. Once that's done, there won't be any complaining, and you can use CVS. Extreme, but simple.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Latex with CVS. This is what I use for my documents. It's simple (yes it is simple.. markup languages are not hard to understand) and with CVS it's far more feature complete than Word in version control.
There's plenty of WYSIWYG tools for Latex. Let Google be your guide.
Simon.
Subversion is your friend...
It handles binaries right (unlike CVS)
It works over a variety of transport layers (HTTP/HTTPS/SSH) with some decent authentication models.
It treast revisions as an archive-wide property.
You can't check in an inconsistant state.
It runs under *NIX, Mac, Windows, etc.
Its free software.
Try it. I switched a few months back from CVS and have been very happy.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Is there any way to migrate to the Open Document Format and then store everything under SVN? OO writes/reads Word files so it might be possible to read the files and save them in the open format. I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of SVN but I know that it r0x0rs for ascii files. I haven't researched SVN support for bin/doc/compiled files.
Someone replied: "Ever heard of Adobe Acrobat? That's what it's for." I'd like to say they missed the point of the question, which isn't just edits to a document. What I think the poster, and myself, are searching for is a web-based document server that tracks who's working on what, when. So if I decide I'm going to work on the Abstract of a paper, I go online, download it, and work on it. Let Word or whatever track my exact edits.
When another user decides to edit it, they'll see that it's "checked out" and that they should work on something else, or contact me to continue with my edits. This avoids people working on the same document. Version control. It doesn't have to be complex to the end user, but I think the behind-the-scenes work for tracking uploads and downloads, different document piles, etc, would be extensive.
While I haven't managed to get them integrated into the workflow yet (working on it), I find tools such as Trac extremely interresting and full of potential: Trac integrates a wiki (for base documentation) with a bugtracker (bugzilla-like) and a Subversion repository while linking all of them together (you can use the SVN commit comments to link a commit to a bug, track them from the wiki, generate timelines, ...)
And important document should never ever be stored in proprietary binary formats: you can't decrypt them yourself, can't change bugs, can't do anything.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I myself like using trac which I believe is opensource and works off of a subversion tree. To my knowledge Subversion is meant to be a better solution then CVS for most items, and can be used on it's own.
On the other hand, my company uses Subversion and TortoiseSVN as a shell extension, edit files locally and simply commit them to the subversion repository. You can do all the blame, branching/tagging you need, but our company is likely much smaller then yours. Something to look at I guess.
It's pretty shocking to change everything (document format, writing environment, collaboration tools) all at once. Start with reasonable source control, the best bacon-saving device you can get. Have everyone check existing docs (Word, HTML, whatever) into source control; Even though diffs are meaningless for the binary formats, the other benefits (versioning, collaboration, remote storage, tags, platform independence) are huge. It's the quickest way to put an end to the madness of emailed .doc files and accidental deletions.
If you've got a lot of Windows users, go with Subversion and get everyone to install the TortoiseSVN shell extension, which offers the most natural GUI for new (and experienced!) users of version control.
Once everyone's comfortable with SVN, you can then start migrating to text-based document formats in which the source control diffs mean something (LaTeX, XML, reStructured, etc.)
I have about three or four machines that I tend to work on regularly, and most of the time what I do to keep up with files is just scp them back and forth between the machines (I run Linux, if you're wondering). As far as revision control, if I need something like that I usually just create separate directories and archive various different revisions in each. Depending on what I need to copy I may also have an NFS share set up for my own local network, usually read-only for reasons clear only to me. Granted, there are a few big differences – my needs are considerably different, and besides that I'm likely half insane – but it tends to work well enough for me.
:-)
If it helps, most of the files will either be various documents, especially schoolwork and/or novels I may be attempting to write, mostly never to be published – these tend to be copied between my laptop and desktop machines – or else various stuff for my Linux distribution, which move mostly between my two development boxes – a Duron-700 which does x86 stuff, and an AMD64 which handles the 64-bit version, CD burning, processor-intensive junk, and just about everything else.
Like I said, may not work for you, but it works for me, so may as well share it with the world, even if they don't give a damn
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Trac is a powerful ticketing system that integrates well with Subversion, and is built around an easy to use Wiki. I would also recommend using TortoiseSVN as a Windows client for both developers and non-developers.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
I used to worry about this, but these days I find it's easier and more reliable to place our records in an open format and store then on a networked plaintext fileserver. You don't have to worry so much about user-end changes; just make sure there's some standard CALEA entry point and the relevant authorities will manage all version changes and backups without any additional effort on your part.
I doubt I'll have much to add to the long list of people describing their experiences with various systems, but I'll pop out this meta-thought: Your developers and "functional analysts" probably have wildly varying needs, especially if the "functional analysts" use word-processing documents like Word. There's no crime in given each group of people a separate system.
Your devs probably ought to get subversion because the continuing cost of using a sub-optimal source management system adds up to staggering amounts pretty fast. Your other writers probably aren't continuously branching and merging and doing all the other things subversion allows (if nothing else that's really confusing for most documents), so they can use a simpler, easier-to-use system that doesn't incur continuous costs due to confusion and documents getting mangled or destroyed due to incorrect use of the system.
The right tool for the right job.
(Note: I'm not saying you should use multiple systems; I'm just saying it's not a crime, if they solve different problems. If you can get your writers to use SVN, especially if they use something with a decent plaintext representation that stands a chance in Hell of merging, hey, great, more power to you.)
Alot has been happening the the Requirements Management space lately. Moving away from documents and into Requirement Management Repositories is alot simpler and promotes interaction. Applications such as Borland's CaliberRM or StarTeam allow users to enter their specifications and requirements as electronic forms. Once requirements, change requests, or specifications are entered into the system, users have the option to export to various formats such as MS Word / Excel. Greater tracability and auditing is available in this model because change requests, defect management can all trace back to a functional requirement. Using tools like Borland StarTeam SCM even allows you to go further and trace requirements to actual source code. Another big benefit is that seeing changes between revisions in Requirements is alot easier since there is no diff'ing involved.
This guy is hilariously absurd.
Just imagine telling people who "style" their 50-page Word-document by manually formatting every heading instead of defining and using styles how to use LaTeX.
dev> So, you just open a tex-file in a text editor...
cunt> Like Word?
dev> No, you see, Word is a word processor. You have to use Notepad.
cunt> But Notepad has no formatting-toolbar.
dev> I said you have to use Notepad
cunt> But...
dev> M$ sux0r omg open sores
cunt> (blank stare) Well, whatever you say, Sir. (slowly backs off and phones the security staff)
Your big problem is your analysts. They want "ease of use" which is just another way of saying "we like working with a word processor". But the messy data maintained by a word processor is incompatible with your other goals. You need a well-structured format such as XML/Docbook. (I mention that specific format by way of example, though it's a good general-purpose solution if you want to maximize your reliance on off-the-shelf technology.) Imposing structure on your document base is moderately difficult, but well within the ability of any semi-competent software wonk. Persuading people that they have to give up their word processors is much, much harder. As the flame I'm anticipating in response to this post will certainly reveal.
I use subversion + LaTeX when I can. I use vim with latexsuite & usually use subversion in another term (although I have the subversion plugin for vim). Each individual product has already been suggested above, and they are powerful in combination.
That being said, it is not usable if you're dealing with end users who don't understand the tools. Your FAs sound like such users. The front ends for LaTeX have scared end users and/or write pretty bad LaTeX (which causes those who hack it in vim to scream). Few are well integrated with version control tools. TortoiseSVN is fairly friendly, but most people aren't used to working with version control systems & it might be better to use something integrated.
In short, you need to figure out your documentation needs (What will the final product of this documentation process be? What markup is needed? What do you hope past revisions of documents will gain for you?) with end user ability (Can your users be trained cheaply to use specialized tools?).
In contrast to my personal use of subversion + LaTeX, I have found I have to have distributed collaboration with others on "throw away" documents and web pages. MediaWiki has come to the rescue. There is a plugin to allow knowledgable users to input TeX. There is a patch which allows page restriction or you can jail a whole installation to specific users. There are many other wikis and other apps that may also work for you. In particular, for specs, you might look at bugzilla or other issue trackers. Just figure out what you need, choose a few likely candidates, and hold hallway testing.
Many have mentioned Trac/Subversion allready and I second that.
For managing Documents I would use Knowledge Tree. The open source version is cool and the professional edition adds in all the stuff managers like.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Based on the requirements, you should be using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Sharepoint.
If those don't fill your needs, then either you've failed to describe your requirements or you've failed to correctly set up the software.
ODF files are just zip files which contain the content in an XML file with supporting text and binary files. The text files are auto-generated & so may have "weird diffs" particularly when multiple people/programs/platforms work on them. I have an ical server backed by subversion's webdav & the diffs are always very amusing, as each program changes whitespace & other such nonsense.
The diffs might still be more usable than those for a 100% binary (zipped) file, particularly for single-user situations.
Has anyone played with compressing/decompressing ODFs for use with version control software? Any pointers?
Where I work, developers use CVS exclusively. It has its quirks, and we've considered alternatives, but the combination of CVS+TortoiseCVS+Jalindi Igloo (Visual Studio integration)+Jira is unbelievebly hard to beat (Subversion doesn't have a reasonable SCC connector, and nothing else has anything that comes close to TortoiseCVS -- even TortoiseSVN is clunky and awkward by comparison. Oh, and CVS mergepoints work perfectly, unlike the nonexistent merge tracking capabilities of Subversion).
When our "functional analysts alike" guys wanted version control, we naturally gave them the tried-and-tested CVS, and gave them instruction on its use. It was a horrible failure. The update-edit-change-commit cycle which is so trivial to developers just didn't work. The people are not dumb - just have a different mindset. We had also tried a Wiki (MoinMoin, works well for devs), but its inability to search or version Excel files make it irrelevant.
Eventually, much to my dismay, we settled on Sharepoint. And while it's clunky, horrible, keeps only the 7 latest versions of any file, has no branching and is often inconsistent with error messages, them users are able to work with it without requiring assistance.
Do not confuse a feature list with applicability of a tool to the situation at hand which, it appears, might depend more on the people involved than anything else.
Who hasn't had to deal with this?
I ended up using plone with the zWiki product and a versioning product (CMFEditions is your best bet). Plone/Zope provides a very powerul platform to start with, adding a few products on top of this and you have what you need, and then some.
There are tons of add-on products, like defect trackers, calendars, source control integration, also a few project management products you can plug-in as well, though I never bothered with such things.
It also supports FTP and WebDAV access for mass file upload, and there are products to make it easier to use various types of docs, be they word or open office.
Anyway, I've used it for a few years now and I couldn't be happier with it - we just keep using it for more purposes.
...begins in wonder
"Shoot the functional analysts. Once that's done, there won't be any complaining, and you can use CVS. Extreme, but simple."
So how many have you shot?
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.webdav. autoversioning.html
From the SVN Handbook:
"Because so many operating systems already have integrated WebDAV clients, the use case for this feature borders on fantastical: imagine an office of ordinary users running Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. Each user "mounts" the Subversion repository, which appears to be an ordinary network folder. They use the shared folder as they always do: open files, edit them, save them. Meanwhile, the server is automatically versioning everything. Any administrator (or knowledgeable user) can still use a Subversion client to search history and retrieve older versions of data."
The poster says they're using Sharepoint. It already has the capability to "check out" a file instead of just opening and saving it. Click the down-arrow next to the document name and select "check out". The document list will then update to show that you've got the document checked out. When you've edited and saved the document, do the same and select "check in".
Doing this keeps previous versions of the document. If you just open, edit & save, then you're just updating the current version of the document.
I would strongly recommend going with a Wiki with access control. This will allow your team to collaborate on various documents. I highly recommend Confluence http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ from Atlassian Software.
Everything your analysts like about the combo of Word and Sharepoint will be provided in an easy to use package, plus everything that the "geeks" want, need, and love will also be provided.
Yours,
Jordan
Of course, Subversion is no more your friend than CVS in this case since neither can do proper diffs! It's binary data for f*ck sake! Subversion handles binaries better than CVS, but not for the reason you state.
Actually, GUI Subversion clients like TortoiseSVN can show diffs for binary files like Word or OpenOffice, using the built-in diff capability of these programs. The end result is you can double-click your binary document and get a window showing you the differences.
The latest nightly TortoiseSVN builds even include an image diff viewer.
-Malloc___________________ I want to be free()!
I tried to implement a Wiki at my last employer to keep track of changes in the software and database as they happened very quick and were hard to keep track of with a normal Word document. I would get emails from a coworker instead of a Word document and I kept all of my changes in a Word document so it would be easier to read and look up. I set up a web server on my laptop with a Wiki site after the owner advised me to find a better way to keep track of documentation. The network administrator saw that I had a web server and had me shut it down. It was only on a local Intranet and it gave me a better idea of how changes were being implemented. I had tried to use many tools like that to help bring order out of the chaos they had, but I guess they just wanted to make my job a lot harder so it would stress me out and force me to quit? I had a lot of ideas for the software and database that coworkers called me names over having those ideas. I see now that the web site for the company has all of my ideas as product features now, after they fired me for no reason given. I was only highed to migrate their database to SQL Server and fix the flaws and bugs and performance problems in their software and database, once I fixed all of that, I was unjustly fired. I guess they got what they wanted out of me, to take them to the next level and then they threw me away like a used tissue.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Amen to that. One of the nicest things about non-binary formats is the ability to difference versions without any special tools.
I am not a crackpot.
- WYSIWYG editor built in with an option to do wiki-markup if you want.
- Full versioning of the docs and attachments
- Full searchable indexing of both docs and attachments (even word, powerpoint, excel, and pdfs)
- Customizable navigation and templating
- Easily customizable permissions
- It works great with open-source databases (postgres in our case) and pay ones and its searching is very powerful
- You can be set-up and running in about 30 minutes
My favorite feature is that we don't have to mess with it at all. We set it up and both non-developers and developers get along with it well. I would chose it over Sharepoint or Notes in a heartbeat (both of which I used before and thought were a mess).Open source with enterprise features, high quality and ease of use. Community and professional support available.
http://www.alfresco.com/
That's exactly the setup I've put in place in a couple of places. Works brilliantly. Non-technical and recalcitrant users simply get another folder that they can drag-and-drop files to. MS-Word and many other tools understand WebDAV and will issue LOCK commands, so other users know when files are being worked on and won't conflict. There are the occasional "drop new copy over the top of updated one" type-errors, but that's the trade-off for ease-of-use. Pick what's more important to you.
Thanks, this is great news.
Mmmmm... SugarCRM is a great, say it with me, "Customer Relationship Management" open source app... However, it is not CVS.
I will now attempt translate this concept for the upper echelon:
CRM != CVS
It sounds like you want something like Lucidoc. It integrates with Word and even IE, and does what you seem to want, I believe. It's pretty seamless, and used in health care document systems. Have a look at it and see if it does what you want; it sure would be easier than convincing MS Word users to use cvs or svn. Disclaimer: I am neither a vendor nor a user of this stuff, but I know one of the developers.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned DOORS (It's by TeleLogic). It's a requirements matrix system that's extensible, powerful, and reasonably cheap if you're a mid-size (or larger) business. ..on a side note there's a modified Wiki by a Edgewall called Trac. I've not used it personally but it looks like the right stuff...
We use Telelogic's Doors It's good for large projects with multiple systems. It supports requirements tracability and revision history to the object (typically a paragraph). After you're done you can export it to MS Word and you can customize this process using a scripting language and Word templates. I work for a government contractor and the systems we develop include hardware and software efforts on multiple independent processors. It might be overkill for what you need.
Brian
You can try this: http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/equipment/prod_subcate gory.jsp?cat=Software/Knowledge%20Sharing&Xcntry=U SA&Xlang=en_US
All right, just because it's easy to put microsoft down and call them the evil empire doesn't mean that we should always do so. The simple truth is that sharepoint IS a good tool. It has version control and it's easy to manage permissions. I am by no stretch of the imagination a microsoft fan, but every once in awhile they DO make a product that works well and actually uses AD in useful manner. I know it's tough to get past a fundamentalist point of view (which is something you see on slashdot quite often) on not using microsoft. This is just counter productive in my humble opinion. I liken this matter to islamic and christian fundamentalists, they are just to stubborn to see the others point of view. Might as well be religion of computing...and it's really sad to see this coming from supposedly intelligent individuals in the technology industry.
Having individuals on the team without a development background and/or the need for a decent UI and all the features you could ask for in a version control system, I'd urge you to get your hands on Alienbrain. It is stable, easily accessible for non-techies, industry-proven and still the market-leader in game dev. You could of course look into UIs for subversion etc. but I guess something along the lines of Alienbrain would be most feasible in your case. And for the rest set up a wiki.
Google crm-ctt and alfresco. Done.
Writeboard is simple and free. http://www.writeboard.com/ Then if needed Basecamp could be used to organize it. http://www.basecamphq.com/
Twiki.org = powerful version controlled wiki, very easy to use. Check out the case studies and customer list!
you had me at #!
Explain what you mean be "distributed"
I don't know how other SVN clients work, but we use an SVN server and Eclipse clients with the Subclipse plugin. The effect is that you login to Eclipse and sync whatever files, directories, or parts you want, and it copies them to your local filesystem. You can then open them in Eclipse (online or offline) but you can ALSO open them using your favorite filesystem tools, including grepping them. The current tree is completely distributed, and you never ever need to sync up unless you WANT to share something or get something new...
Sharing is an inherently centralized process anyway (Whether it happens on a central server or through some peer mechanism is irrelevant, it's centralized on you putting it the same kind of place someone else looks for it)
If being able to destroy the server and rebuild the current version from any client isn't good enough setup some darned backups of the server onto the clients. (I imagine you could install an Eclipse client on the server and have it sync the Subversion directory into ANOTHER repository if you wanted to be psychotic, but since you wouldn't be able to merge changes you wouldn't really gain anything over regular backups.)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
You didn't say in your post that it had to be free software, so....
Check out the products from a company called Stellant (http://www.stellent.com).
I've used their document management product (then called Expedio I believe). It was a good experience using the software. The Expedio product was not listed on their website
however. I guessing they've changed the name or the application.
It's fully web based, runs on *NIX & Windows.
Some of the great things about it are:
- Document version control
- Fully Web based (you can email someone a URL and the click will always get you the
latest version of the document.
- All documents viewed via weblinks are in PDF.
- There is security built into the application. For example; An IT department would
have two sets of documents. FAQ's and processes (outward facing) as part of an
intranet (you just put the URL to the document collection on your intranet page).
Internal procedures and instructions for internal IT staff only (inward facing).
This was a very elegant piece of software and I recommend it highly based on my experience
with it from 3 years ago.
I have nothing to do with the company. I just think it's a good product.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
well, duh. if you want to version control your documents, maybe you should make them plain text and store them with your source code? ya think? that leaves you with html and LaTeX. where I work, we use noweb as a thin wrapper around LaTeX.
All of the source control applications already mentioned do a good job of tracking changes for source code, and the resulting binaries. However, there are other applications that have been designed expressly for managing documents. At the company I work for we use Livelink from Open Text (disclaimer: I have absolutely no financial interest in Open Text - I just use their product). FWIW, we also use subversion for managing our internally-developed software. Everyone, from our CEO on down, uses Livelink to store documents. We literally use it to manage all of our documents. :-)
Livelink stores all of your documents into a database, and provides access and version control on those documents. You have the option of either a web or windows explorer front end that is easy to use for nearly everyone. The software allows you to search through document contents; Create shortcuts to related documents; Provides an interface into Excel, Word, and Powerpoint; and looks to end users like an ordinary file system. You can even set up alerts that send you an email when a document changes, or there is a new document added to a specific folder. If you're truly a glutton for punishment, it has an api that you can use to customize its behavior or integrate into other applications.
There are other document management applications available. I know of, but have not used documentum (spelling?), and I suspect that Xerox and perhaps Adobe also provide document management systems.
The bottom line is that you should try to use the tool that is appropriate for the task. As the old adage goes: When your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail
Wow! I didn't know it could do that! Now I'm off to the "My Documents" to do some versioning...
Various business units at the company I work for uses EMC Documentum for document management and version control. It may be overkill in feature and price for your application though, but for anyone who's interested.
My point of view: I'm a university student and I use LaTeX for about everything I have to give in. The syntax is real easy, it works like a charm ... for me.
:'(. )
::whatever::)
I use VIm, you will use an other editor, probably WYSIWYG. I immediately hear the words my mother when I gave her OO.o ``The buttons look different, what do I have to click?'', ``I don't know how to do <<lame feature>>''. People don't learn, they simply don't want to do it. People do click, but mostly refuse to think about that click. (btw, my mom is running on windows again... with M$ office
When I show the pure LaTeX source to my mother, she totally freaks out. A lot of my friends aren't willing to learn it because ``You can't click''. Now these aren't valuable arguments, but convincing people they have to learn LaTeX is just plainly insane.
Plainly said, DON'T EVEN TRY
Now what would happen if you did seem to convince them to use latex as a markup language?
o Documents will be delivered much faster.
o Documents will have a decent structure.
o Documents will use the looks you give them, so the looks can evolve with the company.
o Documents will be better readable (LaTeX uses variable spacings between letters to do this).
o Documents will get `finished'. (Once the text is there, there is hardly anything to change about it).
The LaTeX source is a plain text file... versioning and text files make great friend (cvs, svn,
gl, MAD
I would suggest using svnwiki, a wiki system that stores its whole contents in a Subversion repository (Disclaimer: I am the main author of svnwiki). That allows you to use the usual svn commands (svn diff, svn log, svn update, etc.) to work with your wiki as well as using the web interface.
You can see an example wiki (in spanish) and its associated svn repository (login as anonymous, password is the empty string; Slashdot seems to strip out this auth information from my URL) to get an idea of what the repository looks like.
These are examples of some of its features:
We use iManage from Interwoven. It integrates directly into Microsoft Office, so it will keep your analysts happy. You can use Oracle or SQL Server. It does version control, permissions, and is fairly easy administrate. For 15 licenses its about $1.5k a year to maintain and I don't know the initial cost off the top of my head. Anyhow, we like it in our 20 person firm.
DokuWiki is meant for document management. Many big name companies(for instance hitachi telecom) use it.
According to my wife, Expedio^H^H^H^H^H^H^HStellent Content Server rules!
....did I just open a door?
http://www.stellent.com/en/products/ucm/index.htm
I sometimes worry she might leave me for the server.
This will only confuse them!
Unless your spec is hundreds of pages long, I dont see a need for branching
Do not overkill
I'm hardly an official Yahoo! source, but I can tell you that we use TWiki internally to manage documentation and project planning for our products. Our development team includes hundreds of people in various locations all over the world, so web collaboration is VERY important to us. TWiki has changed the way we run meetings, plan releases, document our product and generally communicate with each other. We're great fans of your work! Thanks! Eric Baldeschwieler - Director of Software Development
...
Yahoo's TWiki is currently over 60+gigs and growing. It works great. Thanks for the great product!
I think the beauty of Wikis is the zero cost publishing and viewing. SVN over WebDav that someone else here came up with sounds like a great idea too, I'd never thought of that. The very light-weight-ness of TWiki (doesn't need to be that particular Wiki implementation) is what makes it successful. You really don't have to think about going from viewing to editing or anything, it's got a trivial UI on seeing revisions that untrained newbies pick up, etc. It's seriously changed our ability to do collaboration.
I'm mentioning this only because I've not seen anyone else do so. On my current project we are putting word docs into eRoom (http://software.emc.com/microsites/eRoom/index.js p). It has pretty good version tracking and is web-based (so "universally" accessable). We were going to be ISO certified, so I assume it supports that. The only drawback we've run into so far is that there is a limit to the number of objects you can have in an eRoom. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a "medium-size" project, so I'm not certain if this limit will matter. We got around the limit by creating several eRooms based on different topics. Oh, and it's sometimes kind of slow but that may be our local network.
I do not work for the eRoom people, or walk their dogs. I've just been using their product and I think it's decent.
I'm also curious about LaTeX, anyone care to comment about the usefulness of separating formatting from content? I'm guessing that the TeX users think it's the best thing on the planet, but I regularly use formatting in psuedocode to show where "if..then" statements align (begin and end). In other words, the formatting also conveys meaning. I'm not clear on how squishing this through a LaTeX engine (compiler? doo-hickey?) would be able to maintain this meaningful formatting. thx.
http://www.hummingbird.com/products/enterprise/dm/ index.html?cks=y
Works great, far from open source but we are using it for about 100 thousand documents with about 2500 users.
Take my comment with a grain of salt. I don't work for Stellent but I do make a living through their software.
/
Stellent's CMS is essentially a web repository for documents. It does versioning, WebDAV, Office and Windows Explorer integration, LDAP integration, metadata and full text search, and it can generate PDF and HTML renditions of your source documents. They support a wide variety of formats. You will still be stuck with Word but at least you will have a decent web enabled colaboration tool.
Stellent makes several free components available to enhance the system or you can write your own. The software is Java at its core and you can run it on *nix or Windows.
Here is a link http://www.stellent.com/en/products/ucm/index.htm
The software is proprietary and expensive. You can also use it to run websites (WCMS) but that's a whole different topic.
DeltaView comparites (black-line documents comparing versions) don't make mistakes and don't leave embarrassing metadata behind like word "track changes".
They tie into a number of commercial document storage systems such as Hummingbird.
But neither will be free (or even that cheap, maybe cheaper than implementing upgrades to Sharepoint.
We are a huge government department and our group supports an enterprise system based on Hummingbird DM http://www.hummingbird.com/. We started using the product for all documentation, revision requests, specs, etc. Works well for us as its API allows us to integrate it with pretty much anything out there (including MS office suite and more). Probably overkill for a small workgroup. This product is also very popular with law firms.
From what I gather, twiki is ubercool but you have to work within it. Hummingbird DM adapts Windows and standard OA tools to work with it (i.e. practically no learning curve).
There is also MyDMS http://dms.markuswestphal.de/about.html which is purely web based but open-source.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
* For project technical documentation, write it in Word/OO/vi/whatever and check it in with the project.
* For FAQ/project overview, use a Wiki.
* Create a technical mailing list where people can ask/answer questions informally.
Most importantly:
* Provide a browser-based search for all your various sources of information, formal or informal.
The search is arguably more important than the repository.
Use CollabNet. If you go to http://www.tigris.org/, you'll see that CollabNet is what powers the whole site. That will give you an idea as to what it its like.
Disclaimer: I don't work for them, I'm just really impressed by their product.
I would like to manage the My Documents folder on my computer such that changes to my OpenOffice documents and other files (such new files being created) are automatically commited (I'm in Windows). I don't need to worry about branching at all, but I am still interested in these solutions for tracking versions and commiting changes automatically in the background. Do the Tortoise programs do this? Does anyone else have any experience with any other more consumer-level products? Most of the stuff mentioned here (while definitely is what the original poster is looking for, IMO), wouldn't be feasible for me. Thanks.
then you're not going to use CVS or whatever software out there properly. It's obvious you haven't explored the options already available in the software you already have to do versioning, management, etc.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Plone is a CMS Use ZODB backend
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
The latest versions of OpenOffice uses the Open Document format - which basically is neatly formatted XML inside a ZIP file - easy to convert to just about whatever format but still easy for end users to edit.
Throw those files into Subversion and you got an excellent tracking and versioning tool. Install TortoiseSVN on end users workstations and they'll be able to use it.
Use a tool such as Apache Cocoon to present those documents in HTML format on an intranet.
It is my not-so-humble opinion that a lot of this Word mindset that is present in the Windows world stems from a lack of a gtkspell-ish component in Windows.
/v\atthew
I have heard of people (and maybe folks still do, for all I know) who use Word as their email composition component. Can you imagine: firing up a copy of Word each time you press Reply?
I mention this because I was thinking about why Word docs are so ubiquitous in the business world when 90% of the docs I have seen contain absolutely no formatting or other "word processing" type functionality. What would one need to replace in order to get the B.A.s off of Word?
I believe the secret sauce is: spell checking.
I believe strongly that IE ('cause you can forget a BA using something other than the icon labeled "The Internet") with the Google toolbar (to provide speel chekking) against a versioned Wiki would go a long way toward answering TFA's need.
There is something to be said for a slightly more formalized requirements architecture (akin to http://xmlbasedsrs.tigris.org/), but I believe strongly that the presentation/editing of that data should be a light-weight as possible.
--
You mentioned that you are using SharePoint. That already has version control, and you can check out documents while you work on them et al. Are you using SharePoint to its full potential? It doesn't have _everything_ you are asking for, but it does cover several things already mentioned. As long as the directory structure doesn't get out of hand, it works pretty well (if you are using MS Word docs).
Love sees no species.
Alot of people don't realize it, but there is document versioning built into Word. If it's turned on, it will track changes, etc. by user. There is also pretty rich editing capabilities. Reviewers can mark up the doc with comments, etc... Adding sharepoint lets you distribute that process pretty well. Get an in-depth Word book and figure out how to do it in sharepoint/word.
Star Team might bea decent back-end, but the cross-platform client (the part that you have to use daily) is quite possibly the worst programmed and most frustrating pile of junk I have had the displeasure to use since the first Win95 apps came out.
.mp3 files (any player), clicking anywhere on Star Team client makes the player pause for a moment - this happens enough that I can't listen to tunes while working in the client.
.txt file full of complaints that I send every quarter and never get fixed... I made my own client in VB6, just because it's really easy to make COM apps in VB6. It still kinda sucks, because a lot of the problems are due to the core objects, but it's not nearly as bad.
The interface *looks* like a standard application, but everything seems to be internally handled, for example the file open dialog is a java clone of the windows version - not quite as functional, giving unexpected results. The treeview on the left side is just as illusory - it takes much more clicking to expand and contract, since the first click merely moves focus to the tree. If they were going to rewrite the controls, they should have made them *better* not *retarded*
Clicking anywhere on anything generally results in network traffic - if you don't have the server set up on site, you may have considerable delays. When it's busy, it locks up the entire windows shell - I can't ALT+TAB to another application which it works in the background, I can't click on another window - I have to wait. When playing
Most of the dialog boxes are inexplicably sized, that is, there is no good reason for them to be the size they are, when a different size would be much more usable.
It's nearly impossible to be productive using just the keyboard - I'm used to typing (for ex.) CTRL+O as a shortcut to open files, or ALT+F X to quickly navigate a menu - but ST Client reuses so many mnemonics on each menu that you have to type the letter 3 or 4 times to cycle through the choices till you get the one you want. And half of the choices don't make sense anyway, so it's even more of a mystery why they made those choices.
And sometimes it's hard to force it to refresh the page - I make changes, and a colleague tells me "wow you've been working hard" (sarcastically) and they don't see the version number has changed. Refresh I say, I did they say.... o the fun we have.
Oh man I could keep complaining, my notebook at work has a
Applications like this reinforce my idea that Java is the worst platform for any application. Yes I'm sure someone has had success with Java, but unless you plan on fixing Star Team then your reply doesn't really matter. No matter how good *you* are, professional Java apps that I'm required to use still suck.
DO NOT USER STAR TEAM CROSS PLATFORM CLIENT. I cannot warn you more strenuously unless I travel to wherever you are, bitchslap you, and yell it in your ear for a day straight.
I second all the Subversion recommendations, and add to that the web-based Trac frontend. Trac incorporates a web-based interface to your SVN repository, along with authentication & access levels, wiki, and several project-management features (timeline tracking, milestone tracking, ticket system, etc.) Nice interface to SVN, though you should still install Tortoise on everyone's desktop for additional client functionality. Here's an interesting writeup on one sysadmin's use of SVN, Trac, and RapidSVN client.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
i'm at a medium sized software company as well.. our BAs and project managers used to use the same version control system as developers earlier on and.. well.. lets just say they had a hard time and leave it at that ;)
They actually moved to sharepoint which is much easier for them to use and supports revision control along with a load of other features with all that integrated Office and Outlook crap (they love it).
plus, if your software design req documents require branching then there is seriously something wrong with the design.
I would also suggest looking at it. It has the features you're asking for, including very good workflow management. We got it as a web content management system, and it works for that too, though it's a bit hard to use for this. It's also a bit pricey, but complete.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Try AnalystPro software at http://www.analysttool.com/ It provides integrated tools for requirements specification, tracking and document management. It also provides rich traceability analysis tools. The tool should solve your problems.
http://www.vasoftware.com/sourceforge Sourceforge Enterprise Edition is a good, non-free application that does all of these things in one interface. It has a lightweight Doc Manager that can handle pretty much any type of document, an interface to either Subversion or CVS, Wiki, Software release management, Role based permissions structure, integration with Active Directory if you wish it, and some other features I haven't yet explored. It's not free but it's not astronomically priced either.
Check it out, what can it hurt?
(I don't work for VA Software.)
I am not sure how large your organization is or how comfortable they would feel putting documents on a site like writely.com, but I started using it for similar reasons as you mentioned. I had a large research project which needed the input of multiple other people. As the main researcher I wanted the ability to see who had made changes to the document and basically i wanted revision control which word just wasn't offering. I also wanted the advantages of a word processor. I looked into using latex and svn but I knew that the others in the group weren't computer literate enough to take the time to learn how to use either of these programs.
I would suggest Word HTML or MHTML web format, it's viewable in Internet Explorer,
you can always put a PDF output on your website like we do for stable releases.
It's easy to edit with any HTML editor and also directly from Word.
You can easily convert your Word document to HTML using MS Office 2000 and up.
Only glitches are small caps and some stuff like that, that won't render properly
but they are work-arounds, like typing the "small caps" in capital letter in a smaller font.
These should be solve with CSS3/CSS-print and similar.
Doing diff on HTML is easy. Using CVS or subversion or similar on HTML is easy.
If you want a portable printable format, you can print from MS Word
using PDFCreator to create a PDF of "stable releases".
Furthermore, you get all the feature of cvsview and similar program.
BTW, this doesn't stop you of using Microsoft Word and SharePoint if you wish so.
I never understood why people push OpenDoc, WordML and similar,
when good old HTML4 with CSS3 does the same job.
Just my 2 cents.
EMC Documentum is the choice of the Fortune 500 I work for- but we have of late been testing 2007 Sharepoint rollouts linking to the docbases. All you version control and document management is primarily through Documentum, while the collaboration itself occurs in Sharepoint (not to mention Sharepoints links with Outlook, etc). Documentum is true enterprise content management software though, and might not be appropriate for a smaller business. EMC makes eRoom as well, which at leat has some version control and collaboration features.
or... "a bunch of reasons NOT to use Subversion":
http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html
1. branching is woefully inefficient on the storage side
2. merging is (practically) unsupported
3. there is no rollback from a commit, because....
4. it uses BerkeleyDB as the management system.. and that is bad because...
5. Oracle now own Sleepycat software (the makers of BDB)
so WHY would ANYBODY recommend this thing ?!?!?!
of course, have a read of another view...
http://www.pushok.com/soft_svn_vscvs.php
Do you have too much money in your budget? Too much spare time in your schedule? Are your current tools too easy to use? Then you need ClearCase and RequisitePro! And you can replace any effective change management processes with UCM! Yes, for just $10-20k per desktop + an army of IBM consultants + the biggest servers Dell will sell you + 2 full time CC administrators + a 2 year learning curve ... you too an experience the joy that only 10 year old Rational software can bring. </rant>
"The simple answer"
Since OpenDocument is xml based, couldn't you also use CVS / SVN with that as well? I've been wanting to research / make a CVS or SVN database with OpenDocument where you can review the changes made to the OpenDocument files.
I've never had anything but ill luck in organisations that tried to use a decent code library versioning system (pick your favourite) as a word/excel document mangement system. BA's end up hating a product that works perfectly well in a development environment. Office 2003 has "File / Publish To.." as well as "Save As.." which is a nice shortcut if you just want to press the buttons and don't care what makes the radio work.
Remember that BA's and Developers are as different as folks who buy a car for its style, vs. folks who buy a car for the engineering. A place for everyone, but don't confuse yourself with the rabble ;-)
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
PDF for Enterprise. See Adobe.com
Try the following setup for version control: Server: Subversion + Apache httpd + mod_dav_svn + mod_dav_fs Non-developers on Windows: Tortoise SVN Developers: your-favourite-IDE-here or svn commandline tools It really does not matter what format the documents are from the version control point of view (diffs may be difficult with binary), but ofcourse simple text-based formats (pure text, latex, html, docbook) are better than binary (MS Word, OpenOffice). However, habits are hard to change so why not first begin with proper version control and only after that is fully implemented and loved by all, start moving away from MS Office. One step at a time.
The ICE project is a free software system that uses Subversion to manage document versions, and provides a little web server written in Python that watches a working copy for you. If you use a simple generic template it will also make nice XHTML versions of your documents. You can use Word or OpenOffice.org Writer to edit.
Also makes PDF versions of individual documents, and you can use OpenOffice.org master documents to make book-length PDFs (even from Word files, with some caveats).
It is described in this paper I wrote: http://eprints.usq.edu.au/archive/00000697/
The reason I'm recommending subversion is because I strongly believe that development artifacts should be kept as close to the source code as possible (so when you branch or tag these artifacts are part of the operation instead of out of date binary blobs on some network drive). Since we are talking about functional specifications here that means storing them in a source repository and as far as I can see subversion is the best option. It supports efficient storage of binary files; easy integration with windows explorer; easy esposure through an intranet or even over internet via ssh or https; integration with webdav etc.
Do not use cvs. Period. There are no use cases left where cvs is better than subversion. Even the tooling now is comparable or better for subversion (e.g. tortoisesvn is much nicer than tortoisecvs) so the legacy tooling excuse for using cvs is no longer valid.
Jilles
Try KnowledgeTree Document Management System. It will allow to use any document type and organize it on a common location. It can also search within PDF, MS Documents and OpenOffice.org documents.
http://www.ktdms.com/
regards
libregeek
Version tracking documents in isolation doesn't make any sense. For the version track to be of use it has to be version controlled along with all the products of and outputs from the document, and there has be to full traceability backwards and forwards (i.e. if i change a certain requirement in this document which design documents or code units will be affected).
i suggest looking into clearcase or perforce (or svn at a pinch)
No one else seems to have mentioned CaliberRM from Borland.
To me it seems as if you want requirement management and tracking. This is what CaliberRM is designed for. It still needs some work though to make it really useable.
I think there are other similar products out there.
...and that is the heart of it - you have to let the application that created the binary do the diff, and make your repository nothing more than a dumb repository for binary. Otherwise you put everything but the kitchen sink into the repository software. If you really want something that works, you also have to design your client (binary producing) software so it can accept two files and display the sensibly.
Of course people instead decide to use markup for everything (whether that markup is XML or LaTex is a trivial point). Markup languages have their place, but replacing everything binary just isn't it and the sooner the IT community understands that the sooner we'll be out of this self imposed XML hell.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
My view is that you have the technical tools that will achive 99.5% of what is needed. Sharepoint is actually pretty powerful and is trusted to version control many critical docs in industry. Bonus is that it is friendly to use. My view would be to spend all time and effort on designing and executing good end user and community training - anyone that touches the system - so everyone is fully bought into the functionality and the benefits. Create some sandbox accounts. Create some superusers and a community to filter to you changes they need. Let them explore all functionality and importantly, the limitations and what doesnt work so well. Just my 2p worth.
I can do binary diffs just fine with WinCVS and Araxis Merge including Word files.
alfresco is the solution you are looking for.
Document management system that is Enterprise class and provide all the versioning, check-in check out, web and cifs interfaces, massive metadata capabilities. I can't even cover all the features it has - it will solve the problem you describe, by implementing process around document creation and automating alot if it. its at http://www.alfresco.com./
thanks
dave
Actually, GUI Subversion clients like TortoiseSVN can show diffs for binary files
yet another reason to switch to windows !
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
I think you're using the wrong version of the sharepoint server from microsoft. Sharepoint Server 3 should be able to handle all your requested features!
My company (a big one - on NASDAQ since 1983) uses a bit customized Rational ClearCase (Solaris) to store/manage all products and documents:e / w .html
/Z
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/clearcas
Documents are written in SGML/XML (with DTD validation) - with help of customized Arbortext Epic editor:
http://www.arbortext.com/html/epic_editor_overvie
It works pretty well!
Yes, we use TRIM - a product from Tower Software. They suck so badly I'm not going to link to them. The interface is horrible. The system can easily go down for 4 hours on a random afternoon - leaving everyone without their documents which are locked up by TRIM. Getting documents in and out is a pain in the ass. There is no transparent interface from Windows Explorer. Converting documents into TRIM is a pain in the ass. There is no easy way in, no easy way out.
Let's start on the interface. It should be added to the hall of shame. It's quite possibly worse than Lotus Notes. One particular problem is that 'Tower' have not got the hang of using virtual displays of information. Eg: Some 'file names' inside TRIM can be more than 150 characters - and that is before the actual file name is put on. Ever tried viewing 200 characters of filename on a screen? Fun stuff. They can't even display a file virtually or use a system like Gmail's tagging. It really gets fun when your 'search results' come back with 100 documents.. all with 150+ character names and you need one of them. Yes, you CAN spend all day scrolling around. It's lot of fun.
To sum up:
Don't use TRIM (Tower Software)
The interface is horrible
The cost is prohibitive (even for government depts the licencing is damn horrible. It's so bad we won't be upgrading in the near future)
Transitioning into and out of TRIM is a pain in the ass, and the software does NOT help
Trying to use TRIM from (for example) Windows Explorer is a right pain
Trying to use TRIM with, for example, Notes can be an exercise in futility, pain and frustration
Special note: If you need to you can 'unhook' TRIM from Windows. (Here's how it works: You hit File>Save and this box pops up asking you to save the document in TRIM. Regardless of the type of document you are writing. Regardless of the state of the document. Can cause all sorts of wonderful problems with your PC, none the which of least is that Office programs start saving into temporary files instead of the actual file location.. this is a serious pain in the ass if you are locked out of your local temporary folder and can't even open the temporary files to get your document back).
I'm sure that there is something better out there. Slashdot, feel free to tell us what it is because everything I've seen so far makes it just so much better to have a file server and Deal With It.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Have you tried something like Cyco's AM-Meridian? Yes, it only comes in a windows flavour, but it does force workflow, has great permission management, and is very flexible. My work uses it to manage our 50,000+ mechanical and electrical drawings, we're bringing it online to look after our safe work procedures, and I'm in the process of setting up a tech library to assist with information management, for three mines, each 60+ years old. Like anything else, taking the time to plan and test will prevent future pain.
While I would prefer to recommend pure Linux solution, I'm afraid there is no SVN connector for OpenOffice, and M$ collaboration features are well superior to those of OpenOffice or AbiWord.
Unless you look at Web-based Office suites: Zoho, Google Writely...Take a look at Telelogic's Doors. It can export to PDF/Word Documents but is specifically designed for requirements writing and is a major player in that field. It also has built in versioning/baselining features, update marking, comparison capability. And it allows tagging of pieces of the docuement with different traits as well for allocations, estimation and other purposes.
Surround SCM has all the goodies that one would normally associate with a source control tool. (Atomic check-in's, branching, diffing, merging, blah blah blah.) It also has some added features for document revisioning, particularly MS Word docs, that could be very helpful. It is actually integrated into Word so that check out's and check in's can be done without ever leaving the word processor. It also supports diffing of Word documents which I know we use a lot for all the reams of documentation we create.
There is both a full GUI client and a command line client and it comes on Windows/Mac OS X/Linux/Solaris. (For the curious it is written with Qt.) It might be worth checking out.
Document Version Control in OOo Writer
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8911
DocBook Filters - Read and write docbook xml using OpenOffice.org
http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/
I'd strongly consider the LaTex+version control options. That's a rather tried and true approach and does give you more control over typesetting and layout than you'd get otherwise.
I've wondered about using an XML-based format like DocBook or OpenDocument instead. To use OpenDocument, you'd have to have the check in process unzip the document into its components, and the check out process would have to zip the separate pieces into a single unit. But aside from check-in/check-out it would give non-technical users some more familiar software to use.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I have looked into this same issue at my work (small-midsized company) and have had to deal with the same sort of user-ease related problems. The one product that I found that seemed to be the closest match for what is needed would be Plone.
The one thing that I am not sure if they have set up yet (they didnt when I last looked) was a truly full-featured versioning system.
The one thing that Plone does that I have not been able to find other CMS' to handle is word documents. Most of our users have documentation in Word. There are tutorials on how to get Plone to rip out the formatting and images of an uploaded word document, attach the document to the entry, and set the text of the entry to be the contents of the document (thus making the post searchable).
Might be worth looking into...
Consider using a proper requirements tool (i.e. something like SteelTrace) that allows the functional analysts to do round-trip requirements revisioning. Developers and analysts have completely separate points of view and a single solution won't help both at once.
Sharepoint is a great way of *easily* sharing such documents - why knock it if it works?
I suspect you really want a open-source/favourite toolset toolchain here, but as one of the other posted said - you have your requirements already.
Silva supports some interesting features such as (off the top of my head):
It's quite a sweet product which is fairly mature.
Two years of using Latex(VIM http://vim.org/+LAtexsuite http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/ +freemindhttp://freemind.sourceforge.net/+freemind accessorieshttp://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/in dex.php/Accessories+xfig http://www.xfig.org/ cover most of my documentation needs) , and I love it, but in situations where MSoffice users are predominant I wouldnt recomment it. In an office environment where people have their own axe to grind suggesting any "radically different" method can be suicidal.
I've just started playing with Bazaar-NG (http://www.bazaar-vcs.org) for my own personal local branches. Even though the official repository may be in CVS or Subversion, you can then use bzr to seperate out into branch directories various features still in progress, while keeping your CVS/Svn checkout "pristine". This is very helpful at keeping potentially disruptive changes seperate for your own sake, as well as your team members'. You don't want to be the poor fool who broke everything by a careless or mistaken commit; and you certainly don't want to waste time re-writing code you accidentally obliterated when mucking about moving files around, or trying to re-seperate cross-cutting changes to create seperate patches, revise, or debug stuff.
Bazaar-NG is still very new, and there are a few bugs though.
For a non-technical group, I highly recommend using CVS or Subversion with TortoiseCVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/) on the clients. But you need techies to manage the repository. If a non-techie needs to be managing the repository, I've used CS-RCS (http://www.componentsoftware.com/products/rcs/). It's not free, and it's clunky and dumb, but it works without needing anything other than a network and Windows.
For technical documentation, I high
If Sharepoint isn't meeting your needs for documents, you could look at Domino.doc. They each have some benefits and drawbacks. You don't need to shoehorn documents into your source control system.
All 5 companies that I have worked for all used MS Word for document creation, albeit not required.
i.e. I think that the creation of documents tools is a moot point and virtually anything that produces readable(by MS Office) output could be used, as the documents were required to carry a revision version numbering scheme, dates revised, and changes made(short version of a changelog in other words)
Storage at most of those companies was accomplished by the simple use of MS Visual Sourcesafe(primarily), or CVS or other similar revision control system. The more responsible corporations maintained multiple on and offsite live versions along with on(short term) backup copies, and longer term offsite securely stored backup copies of entire server contents including email, documents, source code, hardware design schematics, etc. (Usually an end of the week copy went to secure storage where it was cycled every 3-6mos. or so. -- tape, DVDs could be potentially and economically used for more permanent storage today, but few companies have bothered yet, and server capacities have increased GREATLY, which would require some sort of robust autmated DVD burner that could switch disks on its own for backups...)
yet another reason to switch to windows !
Perhaps my troll/sarcasm detector is malfunctioning today, but there is no reason you cannot do the same thing on any other platform, or with any other svn client. TortoiseSVN is just a good example.
Cheers,-Malloc
___________________ I want to be free()!
The new sharepoint includes Windows Workflow Foundation which vastly improves the versioning and tracking of documents in sharepooint. Considering you are already used to using word and sharepoint i would recomend moving to the next version of both. The non-technical can use word and publish directly to sharepoint and have all the workflow and versioning happen automatically. The more techinically inclide can work with sharepoint directly.
I am looking into the same type of Document Management (meaning word documents) Systems for my company right now.
One of the better ones I found over at Sourceforge is Knowledge Tree. It was easy to get running and seems to have lots of Admin control, permission restrictions, and version tracking.
It does lack the "diff" ability that one gets with source code and a package like cvs.
Hope this helps!
There is many great software products out there for Document Control. If you are trying to find something that is user friendly and easy to use, check out this website you might like what I have for Document Control. http://www.qssolutions.org/
There is nothing simpler than a word processor (like Word, Openoffice, Frame Maker) that has built-in version control and commenting features.
If you use any version-control mechanism like CVS, SUBVERSION etc, you don't need branching or tagging. Everyone should see the latest version from their view. I've found that the mmost useful features are change bars and a page that talks about the major changes in every version. I use clearcase. I create an element for "controlled source" and "uncontrolled PDF". Check out the files, make modifications, update revision history, check in both the "controlled source" as well as "uncontrolled PDF/HTML" formats. Have a cron job or a checkin-trigger that publishes the "uncontrolled PDF/HTML" files over to a public web-site every night (which is then accessed via links from sharepoint). I use sharepoint only for creating hyperlinks to another webserver which actually has the repository of the uncontrolled PDF and HTML documents.
I have not found Wiki's or HTML useful for engineering specifications. They are useful for creating one-page how-tos or sequences of instructions. Word processors can create these web formats automatically anyway. HTML/Wiki prevents people from following a specific structure or template for all specifications. If you want to save time for writers and reviewers, you should create templates. They create some sort of uniformity among the docoments.
Did anyone already mention LyX? This is a nice GUI for editing Latex-like documents. It saves in plain text so it's suitable for storing in a CVS/SVN repository.