Re: RCS on Windows - PowerPoint file

[Hugh Sasse]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Sue Schroeder wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just installed RCS for Windows.  I used to use it on Unix all the time,
> this is my first time on Windows.  I created an RCS folder and then did a
> checkin of a PowerPoint file to do the initial checkin (I tried with the -i,
> and with the -u as well).  When I then did a co -l, (or even just a co), my
> PowerPoint file (about 170K) was overwritten with a 6 byte file and I lost

What is the seventh byte of the original file?  I have just opened 3
powerpoint files with Vim and see that the 7th byte is <ctrl-Z>
for all of them, which on DOS and Win32 means end of file.

Powerpoint files are binary files.  I see no options for working
with binary data in the list of options for `ci`.  Given that RCS
uses diff to control version information, and diffs between binaries
will not work well in terms of efficiency, [what constitutes a line
could be long, changes may not necessarily be local,...], I don't
think RCS will work too well with powerpoint files anyway.  I'd like
to be proved wrong about that.

According to <URL http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSvnComparsion> both
git and subversion support binary files.  Not sure what tools exist
to support migration of RCS files to these.  I don't know anything
much about darcs or arch.

Alternatively you may be able to convert the powerpoint to work with
openoffice "Impress"  and use that, saving the files as XML (i.e.
text).  Never tried that, but the help says that openoffice will
open .ppt files in Impress.

> my original file.  I tried a couple other ways and the same thing happened.

Hope you still have a copy of that.  If this is due to <ctrl-Z> as 
I suspect no more of the file will have been saved.

> It seems to work ok for some text files that I have.
> 
> Am I doing something wrong?  It's supposed to work on PowerPoint files,
> correct?
> 
> Thanks!!
> Sue
> 

        HTH
        Hugh