[ale] Documents and VCS (was Re: Anyone looking for a new gig?)

[Geoffrey]

George L. Allen wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 04:28:59PM -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
>> Stephen Benjamin wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Geoffrey <lists at serioustechnology.com>wrote:
>>>
>> I don't think I said anything about organization.  I was focused, for 
>> the most part on graphics. Html is simply the wrong tool, it's for 
>> websites, not a sheet of paper.
>>
>>> But hey, if writing your resume in vi and using txt2doc makes you happy, so
>>> be it.
> 
> I just mentioned it because I *do* like writing my resume (and everything
> else) in vi.  I keep it checked in to mercurial (was RCS when I started).
> If I ever need to customize it for some particular reason, I can create a
> branch and keep it in version control.

And here I thought you were slamming vi, the best editor on earth. ;) 
Just goes to show how email can be misunderstood...

> MS word has "Version Control" but not in the diff/patch/merge sense,
> certainly not in the git/hg/*vs/RCS sense. And I only mentioned html
> because LaTeX can generate html, which I can cut and paste into word if
> necessary. (LaTeX->html->tidy/edit->firefox->cut/paste->word seemed to work
> a little bit better than LaTeX->RTF->Word last time I was generating MS
> Word resumes.)

I don't know, I just can't see using Microsoft products for anything. 
The old adage goes:

Linux for servers
Mac for the desktop
Windows for solitaire

> None of this had anything to do with graphics.

No, my point was that I don't think there's any place for graphics on a 
resume.
> 
> Personally - I hadn't considered that recruiters editing submitted resumes
> was a common buisness practice. I instinctively prefer pdf to other formats
> for finished documents because it provides a minimal level of authenticity
> and integrity (like paper).

As do I.

> But - back to VCS and documents. I wish there were a way I could replace
> sharepoint at work with git... or mediawiki. There is a large ammount of
> man hours at work spent swapping Word files, hand-jamming in changes,
> uploading to sharepoint, tracking what is where, finding out who has the
> latest changes, etc. etc.
> 
> Even though most of us naturally understand the idea of a patch or merge,
> most of the non-IT people generating these documents 'collaborate' by email
> by sending around more and more modifications to more and more copies of MS
> Word files, then merging by hand. Changes get lost, and it takes a large
> ammount of diligence just to maintain who has the current, cannonical copy
> of a given file where.

Agreed, tremendous amount of productivity lost there.

> I guess I want a MS Word work-alike to work like GIT, but require no
> training. This probably brings us to wiki's, which allow the full measure
> of collaboration and change tracking. Unfortunately, I haven't defeated the
> FUD with regard to that yet.

I hear you.

> They are fully bought into sharepoint, which I don't like, because you have
> to manage both the site, the files, and the content. A wiki allows you to
> manage the content only - and the site maintains itself, because there is
> only one major content-type (an article) which is organized via a
> namespace.

Diffent mindsets.  It's going to be difficult to make them understand.

> Anyway - not sure if I've made a clear point or just rambled in a general
> direction. But we have such good tools to manage source code, but the tools
> to manage documents are still sortof primitive imho. I might be missing
> something though.

I don't know, I pretty much agree with you for the most part, then 
again, I've pretty much treated documents as simply another piece of 
source code and managed it much the same way.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  - Benjamin Franklin