Updating Web Notebook: version management

Posted on March 1, 2013 by admin

Methods for version management:

WP Document Revisions

  • adds a new tab to main side widget (below Pages and Comments), called Documents.
  • Under this tab you can upload files from your computer. These now behave has posts. Instead of editing the post, you just upload a new version of the document. A change log note may be added.
  • WordPress’s existing version management for revision is used (as far as I can tell). BUT each revision at under the revisions tab also has its own permalink, which you can share or use to link it to other pages.
  • Now if only it had an editor, so documents did not have to live externally. Afraid uploading too many .doc/.odt/.pdfs is not going to be good for my server volume.
  • Pros
    1. wordpress native
    2. good for PDFs
  • Demo

Github links

  • Keep protocols in local folder on computer in markdown.md format. useful Windows Editor: MarkdownPad
  • Version manage the folder with Github
  • Dig into the Github, find file of interest in the repo, select history, chose the version you want to link to here, post this whole web-address as the link.
  • Pros
    1. Saves memory – Github handles hosting free, and more-over only differences are saved.
    2. Markdown format files, images separately web uploaded and embedded via links, just like posts
  • Cons
    1. still requires external folder to manage documents (protocols)
    2. a bit tedious to get links
    3. github based display, rather than native wordpress lab notebook site.

Gist Embed

  • Write original posts as markdown on Gist site
  • select Revisions and select the name of the most recent post, to have it show up in markdown. Copy the html address of this site.
  • Copy the embed link from the gist site and replace the https:// address in the embed link with the one for the dated post.
  • Use the unmodified gist embed link as the permalink to whatever version is most recent.
  • Note: There seem to be quite a few interpreters for Markdown. Rather surprisingly the Gist embed rendering interpreter is pretty different than the interpreter used on the Gist site.
    1. different interpretations of space indents
    2. different interpretation of mixed bullet and number lists.
  • Demo Gist based version management
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