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I have recently started a new job as a Business Systemd Analyst. The company has an in-house document management system that reads/parses RTF documents that have a BBCode-like syntax to do basic conditional, looping and inserting of data from a database; my role is to modify these RTF files with the code blocks to make them dynamic.

For my own personal use I would like to utilize a version control system to better handle revisions and so I don't have to have dozens of copies of a file during the various stages I'm working on them, probably Mercurial (I don't feel like dealing with Cygwin), but seeing as I'm more used to source code in an IDE than a rich text document template, I'm not quite sure if a VCS system is even the appropriate solution to use as I couldn't really use them to diff files, just as storage and tracking.

Any suggestions for this? Could I get by with a VCS system or am I applying programmer logic to a non-programming problem? :)

Wayne Molina
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1 Answers1

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seeing as I'm more used to source code in an IDE than a rich text document template

It is a look at a strange angle: you can version all, always, anytime. Just sometimes it's less usable, sometimes - more.

If your files are basically text - you can version/compare/rollback, if your files are readable by special viewers texts - you can also diff revisons, if your files are readable by eyes - you can also merge sources. If you have GUI, you have all power of SCM and usability of tools.

...And be glad that you did not have to work with something like this

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1251\deff0\deflang1049{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset204{\*\fname Arial;}Arial CYR;}}
{\colortbl ;\red0\green128\blue0;}
{\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1515;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20\'dd\'f2\'ee \'ef\'e5\'f0\'e2\'e0\'ff \'f1\'f2\'f0\'ee\'ea\'e0\par
\'dd\'f2\'ee \b\'e2\'f2\'ee\'f0\'e0\'ff \cf1\b0\'f1\'f2\'f0\'ee\'ea\'e0\cf0\par
}

(ordinary pure-RTF with short russian text in it)

Lazy Badger
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