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by Zak 2866 days ago
People I know who definitely have this problem tend to work in creative fields - especially musicians and (digital) visual artists. They almost universally have a bunch of files with names like project_final2_revised_reallyfinal3_with_edits_from_sally.psd.

Of course, a solution that works well with all the different binary file formats people in those fields use wouldn't be easy.
1 comments
exikyut 2866 days ago
Ah, that. Yes, absolutely I'd love for a solution that fixes that.

It would definitely need to work with large files though, which categorically precludes Git.

The first point, I think, would be building a delta engine with case-specific code for the most common ubiquitous file formats, like docx, xlsx, psd, etc. Of course it wouldn't be able to be perfect with everything but it would certainly be better than eg just recompressing each version or something equally naive.

The UX would be the next major hurdle. Time Machine is a good example of the kind of simplicity that would be needed, but it would need to be a have a bit more surface area to be applicable and useful to all scenarios.

One other feature that comes to mind, which would be incredibly difficult to get right but probably critical, would be useful version diffing. I think keeping this simple and just building something that can do $anything->SVG (with maybe cheats where bunches of the SVG is mostly just a bitmap in certain cases) and then doing something fast on the SVG (and/or its bitmap contents...) would probably be the most viable target.

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Zak 2865 days ago
It think it does need branching and collaboration. There needs to be a way for Sally to contribute those edits, and they might not actually make it in to the final result.

No doubt there would be a learning curve. I think that's OK. The target market here is serious users who already dedicate time to learning professional tools like Photoshop.

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exikyut 2865 days ago
Oh no. Now you need full file format parsing so that you can resolve merge conflicts.

:(

That would take years to get anywhere with ._.

The diffing idea I suggested above is just manageable, a la macOS Preview, with hacks. Branching requires folding-back-in, and that's not just a case of "A or B", it's a case of "A, B and C conflict with D and E, while F G and H are okay," where I could then say "save B and E but drop F". If B is a layer, E is an imported asset and F is a custom filter... you get the picture. You need a reimplementation of Photoshop (halting problem).

:/

Sad that everyone hates GIMP.

But... hmm, this could get folded into Blender, and then make the rest of the industry jealous.......

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