H & M 8.5 a secret?

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Gerold Krommer
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:09 pm

H & M 8.5 a secret?

Unread post by Gerold Krommer »

Hi,

I accidentally discovered it and never saw an announcement. For me personally SnagIt integration is precious... now if H&M had git support...

Kind regards,

/Gerold
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Darren Rose
Posts: 204
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2012 3:01 pm

Re: H & M 8.5 a secret?

Unread post by Darren Rose »

Agreed, SnagIt integration is fantastic news, like you I had no idea 8.5 was released until I saw this post
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Tim Green
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Re: H & M 8.5 a secret?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Definitely not a secret, but I have been sick for the last couple of weeks so I have some catching up to do with announcements. (Covid finally got me, despite extreme caution.)

Also, git and generalized version control support is coming with the next major version in the Fall. On the downside, this also means that the status icons in the TOC are going to be removed, but that is unavoidable. That level of integration creates way too many overheads and is what has caused all the problems with version control in the past. It requires truly massive development efforts -- literally months of work just for that small feature -- and direct use of the version control DLLs, which the developers of those systems don't like and actively resist. Among other things, it was the reason why we needed to perform the monkey dance with the Collabnet command line components for SVN.

In the next version we are switching to simple command line integration of the various version control systems, which means that it will always be possible to use the latest versions without restrictions. You lose the status icons in the TOC, but it is definitely worth it. :)

All that being said, there is nothing to prevent you from using git or any other modern version control system now, because Help+Manual's XML project files support this directly. To do this, you create your project in uncompressed XML format (HMXP) and load the entire project folder into your version control system's repository.

Each user checks out their local working copy of the project as they would normally for any version controlled content in the repository. Before working, they then perform an update (pull in git terms) to make sure that their local copy is in sync with the repository, and after working they perform a commit (Add + Commit + Push for git) to update their changes to the repository. With git this is particularly easy:

Before working:
git pull

After working:
git add -A
git commit -m "Your comment"
git push


That is really all there is to it. For your digitally challenged users you can simply write two little scripts and put shortcuts to them on their desktops.

The only thing you lose by not having the active support in Help+Manual is the ability to synchronize with the repository from within the program.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
michal_novomesky
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Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:21 pm
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Re: H & M 8.5 a secret?

Unread post by michal_novomesky »

We use Sourcetree for GIT integration with the H&M source, helpful for users who don't like command line.
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