Re: RCS on Windows - PowerPoint file

[Sue Schroeder]

So, I think you guys were right and I was just doing it wrong!!!  See the excerpt which I just found from one of the README files.  I did the rcs command first to create the initial RCS file, then did the co/ci-s of the file and it seemed to be ok (note I'm on a different computer but will try again on the other computer as well).

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP!! YOU GUYS ARE GREAT!!

"* Note 2: binary files

This version of RCS for the PC does now support revision control of
binary files. The main goal, however, is to allow control of source
files in heterogenous environments. In such environments, the systems
can have different conventions for line separation in source code
files. To allow shared use of RCS files between systems with different
line separators, a conversion must take place when checking in/out
files. 

This, naturally, would break many binary files. Therefore a special
option, -kb, must be used for binary files with this RCS version to
mark them as binary files. Before you can check in a binary file you
must initialize an empty RCS file with "rcs -i -kb <rcsfile>". Do not
use -kb for plain text files because it makes those RCS files
non-portable to other operating environments.

The way how RCS currently stores "differences" between the revisions
of a binary file is quite inefficient (but more or less portable).
Future version of RCS may support better methods."

On Jan 12, 2008 12:05 PM, Karl Berry < address@hidden> wrote:

   I think I did the rcs -i -kb after doing the ci of the file.  Should I be
   giving it a try before??  What does the -kb do?

Might as well try; one would hope it would be the same as ci -kb, but ...

The -kb is what tells RCS it is a binary file, and to perform file I/O
in binary mode (which you definitely want).  From the co(1) man page:

 -kb Generate a binary image of the old keyword string. This acts
             like -ko, except it performs all working file input and output
             in binary mode. This makes little difference on Posix and Unix
             hosts, but on DOS-like hosts one should use rcs -i -kb to ini-
             tialize an RCS file intended to be used for binary files. Also,
             on all hosts, rcsmerge(1) normally refuses to merge files when
             -kb is in effect.