[TxMt] PracTex journal tips, revision control and academic workflow

[Christoph Held]

Hello all,
perhaps this is a bit off-topic so please bear with me. Some regulars on
this forum were instrumental in developing these thougths though which is
what encouraed me to post here.

I am a researcher doing some of my writing in Multimarkdown text files and
put my work on a portable harddrive which I carry home after work,
synchronize to my home computer and carry on working there. Ditto for the
reverse.

After reading a series of inspiring articles about how to use subversion
repositories for academic writers over on Practex journal I am beginning to
think that I could make better use of my resources. Here is what I plan to
do:

Go to work, read, write, take notes etc. Some of this takes place in
textfiles, some will reside XML files (Tinderbox), and some also in binary
files at the end of the day. I have access to a server that I would like to
push all my changes and new data to and then go home. From home, I would
like to pull all changes to my home computer and carry on.

1) Will the version control systems compare whole lines or do some kind of
document comparison trying to find identical blocks regardless of (soft)
line breaks?

2)  what I don't know is how well this system will work for binary files,
e.g. Aperture libraries, Word files from colleagues etc. Ideally, I'd like
to just send the changed bits of files, not all files that have changed to
save bandwith and time. If something went wrong I would want to go back in
time.
I am working on a localized system (meaning non-US) in case that is
presenting a problem.

I am not afraid of the command line but I have no experience with version
control whatsoever because I was left with the impression that it was of
little use outside source code development. Although I do some reading about
subversion, git, mercurial, bazaar etc I need some guidance if I am barking
up the right tree in the first place.

I would greatly appreaciate your thoughts
Prion
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