[kwlug-disc] rcs (git?) integration/prevalence? [Was: CSS: varying colours based on inheritance]

[Kyle Spaans]

2011/7/7 unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca>:
> Chris Frey wrote, On 07/07/2011 12:05 PM:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 11:50:39AM -0400, unsolicited wrote:
>>>
>>> Which, perhaps, makes my point? That we probably don't use it as often as
>>> we should?
>>
>> Probably.  But I'm not sure GUI is the answer.
>
> And I'm not sure I've expressed this very well.
>
> My premise on this conversation was Joe User, whom may never use the command
> line.
>
> And for GUI, not sure I was thinking so much a separate gui, as, whatever
> file open / close they were already in the gui of, integrating with git.
> Perhaps a checkbox?

The problem here isn't a GUI or lack thereof. The problem is content.
Git (and most RCSes) are built around versioning and diffing plaintext
files (some are better/worse at version binary files). The unit of
currency in Git-land is the patch, generated by `diff`. OO.org files
are not plaintext, so trying to integrate git into OO.org runs you
into the problem of "Well, git isn't totally meant for binary files".
On the other hand, (not knowing anything about the versioning system
in OO.org) with binary diffs or a special diff that understands the
structure of OO.org documents, you can build a versioning system -- it
won't necessarily have the same interface as Git though: you commit
changes, see a version history, and roll-back when needed.

But now if your "word processor" was some plaintext editor, IDE or
OO.org in plaintext mode, then it's trivial to present a GUI interface
with buttons for each of the git commands.