Versioning: what to look for in a publishing system

admin | October 1st, 2009

A publishing system without the capability to save versions (in the sense of revisions --not versions as in language versions) of stories, images, illustrations, and other objects, wouldn't be worth much. But what exactly is versioning and what can (and perhaps should) it look like? All publishing systems and editorial workflow applications support versioning one way or another, but the support may range from the ultra-simple to the very complex.

One of the first questions that you must ask yourself when considering a system’s versioning approach is whether the system when saving versions, is saving complete versions or just the changes (delta). Obviously, delta changes are more lightweight, but need to be a second-level approach. Delta changes should be consolidated on a regular basis, either automatically, pre-defined, or manually.

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