Andrew McNabb wrote: > This is one of the main reasons I avoid using OpenDocument files. I > don't mean that in the obnoxious sense--I really wish I could use them > more, but I don't because I can't check them in, etc. As much as I like > LaTeX, it's not perfect for everything. I use it for everything, > though, because it's a plain text format. > > I would love an answer to your question.
OpenDocument is a plain text file ziped to save space. This is really a nice feature for a few reasons. Remember that this format means to compete with Microsoft Office, and yet to be a format developers can easily adopt because of it's style-oriented xml standard. This means they want business professionals to use the format because it's easy for them. They also want developers to use it because it's extensible and open. The zipped, single file means that the business professional can send open a single .odt, .odc, or other .od? file they saved, and get the document they expect to get just as they did with a Microsoft Office program, a Lotus Suite program, or a Corel Office program. Yet the developer knows it's really a bunch of files - an xml file with classes and ids, a style/css file with layout or presentation information, image files, and more. The business professional knows just which file to attach to an email - after all there's only one. The astute business professional will notice that OpenDocument files are significantly smaller than their counterparts - competing formats are not compressed. The deveoloper doesn't attach anything - attaching files to emails is evil - so he/she uses ssh, scp, or something native to *nix and a web link ;) I'd give this a try: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooosvn/ Otherwise, since you can open OpenDocument files with various archive apps (it's just lossless zip), you could: 1. Save the files to ~/Documents/[odfName].[ext] with OpenOffice.org app or other default path 2. Set up a crontab every x minutes to a script that: a. checks for new files or newly updated files using a the appropriate Unix timestamp [*] b. extracts new files into the repository c. extracts updated files into temp dir d. checks out the updated document files from the repository e. updates the checked out files f. optionally cleans up the checked out files 3. The crontab will only act on files created and modified since the last time it ran, so run this operation once on all files before you start the crontab [*] Alternatively, it could extract all odf files and run a diff on the results, but this may take considerably more resources. There are probably better ways to do this. I did this Google search which had some promising results: http://www.google.com/search?q=opendocument+svn Brandon Stout http://mscis.org -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
