: Do You Use Any Version Controlling Software/Methods As Writers? As writers, do you use any version controlling software to track and monitor what you write? For example, if you accidentally deleted

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If you are using a Mac, one thing that many people miss is that there is built-in system versioning that is available in any app that supports it.

For example, if you are writing in Pages, you can go File â–¶ Revert â–¶ Browse all Versions to essentially go back in time to previous versions of your document. It works somewhat like how Time Machine works for all files. And it is available on many different built-in and 3rd party apps.

Of course you can also use Time Machine to browse back in time within a folder that contains your chapters or other writing documents.

But it is definitely work exploring learning to write in Markdown (which takes all of an hour) and then that basically makes you a programmer, and you can use programming tools. I write in BBEdit because it gives me the feeling of a long empty page and the writing I make there can be easily machine-converted into any kind of format for publishing. BBEdit has Git and Subversion support.

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I use The Novel Factory (as you might expect) which allows me to have tabs for up to three drafts, plus 'blocking'. I also occasionally save a new version of my entire novel file in case I want to go back to something earlier.

I think that if you have too many copies, then, after a while, the overhead of searching for something gets too high. And probably, when you finally go back and find it, you'll discover it wasn't actually the work of genius you remember!

Perhaps that's just me.

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As I'm a programmer I do, as I'm used to it and version control is made for tracking revisions of text, so it is working pretty good with writings.

Pros using version control:

backup is easier, as I once created backup for my repositories I simply put everything that I want to keep under version control
I can see and go back to older versions of my writing
I have a log of my writing activity and can use that for planning
I can test different paths to go through the story and which one pans out best

I personally use bazaar, but which modern version-control you use is more a matter of taste.

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I script Python by day and write by night, and personally I find version control more distracting than helpful. I get so diverted tinkering with it, I end up forgetting about the book itself.

I find the easiest scheme to just increment chapters. A hypothetical chapter 1 becomes chapter 1.2 with a new edited version for example. They alphabetically self-organize in the folder stack that way, and make it easy and clear to scroll to whatever one. When that view, hence view of what I'm doing, gets confusing to my eye I know the story is too; and find that a handy pneumonic.

Well done VC setups are invariably more complex then that, and ironically by their nature will hide growing mess of an author's sprawling story by conveniently compartmentalizing and organizing everything for him. Dangerous dependence for a new writer, I think.

But of course, to each their own! Good luck!

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I'm a writer, not a coder, and I started with this same exact question. I started using Git and it works perfectly, though it was definitely took some time to learn. It's cool because Git is popular and there's GitHub and lots of people are into it.

That said, I understand that Mercurial is just as good or better, and much easier to use with "saner" more intuitive commands.

I'm still using Git since that's what I started with, but I spent too much time learning it and it's not better than Mercurial. If I had it to do over again, I would use Mercurial with Atlassian's SourceTree to graphically view and check in changes to drafts as I made them.

It's cool to do some writing, then have SourceTree show you all the additions and edits you made. Then checking in the changes gives you a sense of accomplishment because you can see the progress you made that day. :-)

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I use Apache Subversion (merely for Android & web development, not exactly content writing) - either self-hosted or on client's Beanstalk or private GitHub accounts.

Just wanted to recommend my favorite clients; both of them are commercial, but affordable and definitely worth the money: Syntevo SmartSVN & SmartGit.

SmartGit supports SVN partially - but only a basic set of commands.
The downside might be that one can only compare plain-text files 1:1;
on any other files one can just see them something has changed.

With one file per chapter and some script which merges the plain-text chapters into one single file - with chapter-headings and page-numbers, maybe.

I wouldn't recommend TortoiseSVN - but that's probably just a personal thing - any VCS-client which got a full implementation of the command-set should do the job.

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Try Scrivener for this. You're able to make "snapshots" of a piece of work before you make any drastic changes. As well, Scrivener makes backups for you and auto saves while you are writing. Not having to use multiple programs for version control is nice.

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I use Google Docs revision history.

True version control systems like SVN and GIT are too complex, requiring knowledge of the command line, and are really designed for collaborative teams, working on dozens of different files, all at the same time. They're overkill for writers.

I use Microsoft Word for writing, and every time I save Google Cloud Connect uploads my revision to Google Docs. I get backup and revision history for free.

If you don't use Microsoft Word try SyncDocs. SyncDocs works like Dropbox, creating a folder that is synced automatically to Google Docs. It also saves revision history.

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Microsoft Word (and OpenOffice.org, at least) supports versioning - I don't recall exactly how to go about using it, but in older versions, at least, it seems you just select the 'Versions' option from the file menu.

You can compare different versions with essentially a pretty diff, leave comments, etc.

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I've got a couple of things I've done or tried over the years:

1.) When starting my edits or writing for the day, I make a copy of the word doc using the date in the filename. That way, I have a new copy each day and can fairly easily go back to a previous version on a day-by-day basis. This sounds like what you're trying to get away from, but it works for me.

2.) When releasing in eBook format, I version each "release" with a version similar to a software product (I'm a software engineer by day). A "release" consists of the word doc, a pdf (for my web site, Scribd, etc.), an ePub (for B&N), the cover png (for CreateSpace), and the CreateSpace version. All of these files go into a separate folder. Backups are done to Carbonite.

I track the release in a spreadsheet, mostly so I know which retailers have which version. It can get very confusing, very fast if you don't keep some sort of record.

I've entertained the idea of using SVN (source control), but haven't yet had to go to that extreme. I wouldn't recommend SVN for the novice, though. It's easy to get tangled up with it; hours will be wasted trying to make it right.

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Usually what I do is to save multiple copies with incremental numbers, but I find that this isn't a good method because I end up with a folder full of word documents of the same file + changes. It isn't really easy to organise because of it.

In a version control system you can perform such things as diffs to basically get a view showing changes from one version to another. You can also create branches, merge branches, and so on. Depending on where you host and what you use, you could also have comments at certain lines (all the way to the extent of discussions). This is usually outside the realm of the source version control, and usually in the webview.

The advantages go beyond single user use. You could for example have a proof read copy and do a diff to check what the person changed. Similarly you could coordinate work with other people responsible for certain aspects of how your writing is suppose to look, proof reading, editing, and so forth, and all this with out going though a iterative time consuming "pass me the last copy" process.

I personally recommend something like git for the simple reason that unlike subversion you can work completely locally anywhere, anytime ie. if it's not too clear, with out Internet, or any server.

It goes with out saying, people tend to find it hard to explain (and the ones I've had to were from a technical background no less). This is particularly true when it comes to the command line tools, but GUIs fair no better. One very key problem is junk getting uploaded, I suggest if you're going to use this as a collaborative system you make sure to set some very clear rules, as seeing unnecessary junk files in the repositories is infuriating.

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If I'm writing something in a plaintext format, like LaTeX or HTML, I'll generally use version control. For example, when I wrote my undergraduate thesis (in LaTeX) I used Mercurial.

For stuff written in a word processor, I generally don't. I do keep backups (using Apple's Time Machine software) so I can jump back in time to any day. And if I start another draft or a major revision, I'll manually make a copy. For minor revisions, I'll use my word processing software's change-tracking functionality.

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I use Mercurial (see Daniel's answer for a link). I do my (little, atm) writing in pure text files (with my trusty Emacs ;-D), but in a self-designed (and ill-designed at that, for the moment) "novel" format. That way I have pure text with almost no (currently at least) formatting (which is recommended, according to this very site ;-)) but can generate TeX (or other formats, later) when needed.

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I use Subversion and Git as sort of a front end to Subversion.

Using version control has saved my ass several times. I definitely recommend it.

One advantage is that it becomes easy to work on a piece of writing on several different computers.

I do all my writing in text files rather than Word or Pages or Scrivener or anything like that. Version control and plain text go hand-in-hand. However, you can use non-text formats with version control if you prefer.

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Flashbake is a command line interface for a git repository that had some potential but I think it never really took off. It works in the background and is designed to record ambient data as well like the weather at your physical location and the music playing on your computer at the time you are writing.

It is the brainchild of Cory Doctorow and was intended not really as source control but more as an archival tool that future historians could dig through since personal diaries and the like are no longer prevalent.

It's an intriguing idea and it would be cool if something like this became the standard for working writers.

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I use Celtx as my main writing tool and have subscribes to their Celtx Studio which gives version control.

It's not exactly great because you have to be connected to the internet all the time (there is no "Work locally and sync when you have internet again") and it's slow if you add tons of graphics/media to the file (because everytime you save the entire file gets uploaded), but it's there.

For some other stuff I'm using git and a private GitHub repository because I work as a software developer and just use whatever tools I know and somehow make them fit.

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I use git. There are a number of popular GUIs for it, though I tend to prefer the command line.

My backup service of preference is Rsync.net because they are reliable, fairly priced, support (and encourage) you to encrypt your stuff and not give them the keys, and really care about their users' privacy.

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Fossil because it's light weight and easy to backup by just copying the database file to a new location.

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I am a programmer in real life, so using a version control software was a no-brainer for me. I write stuff in plain text, with each chapters in a separate text file.

I use Subversion on them, with TortoiseSVN on Windows, and also use a Dropbox for backing up my repository.

This way I have my changes versioned, I can comment the changes I commit, and if my hard drive decides to die, I can be back really quick.

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You should really just grab and try any version control software presented on the market. This soft is not really more than controlling text files, and text files is what we do.

I use Mercurial and I am very happy about it. It's easy to use for writing alone, as Mercurial tracks all your changes through local repository, and easy to use when collaborating, because it is a distributed version control system. There is also good Mercurial user interface for Windows presented.

But I warn you that file merging is not available, or will be hardly possible, when you're using some kind of text processors (Word i.e). This is problem of all version control systems.

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