VERSION CONTROL MACRO

[Joey Jacobs]

I would like to write a macro to use version control. I do
not want to use the built-in version control in Microsoft.
Any ideas as to where to start? I thought of having a pop
up box to prompt
"save to current label"
"save to new label"
"save to current version"
"save to new version"

If they choose new version it will save my document with
the existing path and filename and add (V1) or something
at the end of the filename. They can then afterwards
compare different versions and mark-up changes. I thought
I saw something like this on this site previously but
unfortunatley cannot find it again.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jezebel]

The macro side of this is not hard, but the user design side is. (I've been
involved with several projects that do exactly this.) You ask where to
start: do not start with the code. Think long and carefully about what
you're actually trying to achieve. Try writing formal definitions of what
you mean by 'document' and 'version' -- it may sound obvious, but believe
me, it isn't.

As a rule of thumb, each hour you put into design saves you ten hours of
coding.

 

[Joey]

I have thought it through carefully and have almost
completed my whole program. What I don't know is how to
get it to check that the previous document was saved "fax
to Joe Blocks - Ver1" or "... - Ver2" and calculate and
not overwrite anything. So it must look at the last part
of the file name, then use the next number e.g. Ver3 but
ensure that Ver3 doesn't exist. They could call in Ver2
having a Ver3 already and want to save it as Ver4.

 

[Jezebel]

This kind of logic is precisely the sort of problem I had in mind: what
determines the document and version? the filename? the properties of the
document? the document ID in your data log? the filename in your datalog?

You can go mad trying to resolve these issues.