Comments on spfweb: my life and other animals: OS X Packages and Version Control

Look, not all documentation is bad, remember - no ...

2008-01-21T08:07:00.000Z

Look, not all documentation is bad, remember - no quality process, no ISO certification, no business. If it adds something to the process, it is good, if not, it is bad. This judgement should be made on a word by word basis though!

Open Office can be used instead of Microsoft Office for some tasks (not sure about powerpoint compatibility). Being bound by the way you customer works is not just limited to Word though, see Visual Studio for examples.

@Chris: That's a very good point you make in your ...

2008-01-20T22:38:00.000Z

@Chris: That's a very good point you make in your last paragraph: why do we need the document in the first place? Well - requirements capture and testing spring to mind. Surely even you can't deny these processes are necessary to some degree?!

However, I guess your point is - why must we use iWork or Office to document these processes? The tool - whether it be Word, Pages, Acrobat, whatever, is only the means of documenting those processes. Are we using the right tool?

And, yes, perhaps the holy grail of requirements-capture-tools-with-built-in-test–script-generation which uses an underlying database, separate to the version control mechanism may be a better way to express those processes. But that only solves the problem for some documents.

Can you do a Keynote/PowerPoint presentation on a wiki? :-)

Such a shame about iWork docs and subversion, etc....

2008-01-20T22:12:00.000Z

Such a shame about iWork docs and subversion, etc. It is really a problem with iWork, that when you save a document it chooses to mess with the hidden files that are nothing to do with it. There are workarounds to reinstate the subversion files following a save, but it is all a bit of a nightmare. Apple should fix it.

In the meantime... consider git, etc, but how many times are you prepared to change you config control system?

The only positive that can be taken from this (I think) is that it might make you reconsider creating yet another document. Aren't there enough effing documents in the world? What's it for? What does it say? Does it have any point? Wouldn't it be better expressed in another form, e.g. a Wiki?