Managing thesis manuscript versions, the way a lab uses it

Why a thesis folder grows names faster than any other

Several people ask for changes (the advisor, co-authors, reviewers), weeks go by between one request and the next, and the data changes in between. "The version the advisor saw", "the version we submitted", "the version after the first review" all have to be opened again at some point, so each file gets its circumstances written into its name. And unlike other documents, it is not one manuscript that moves but the figure files, the tables and the references along with it.

What changes when you hand over one folder

Octorium’s unit of history is not a file but a folder. Hand over the whole thesis folder (manuscript, figures, tables, data summaries, response letters) and every time you save and the folder goes quiet for a moment, the whole folder at that moment is recorded. "Which file was Figure 3 at submission?" goes away — choose the entry from submission and the folder is there as it was.

1. Install it and hand over one thesis folder. Nothing appears in the folder.
2. Save as you always have. The entries pile up under Today, Yesterday and the days of the week.
3. The moment you send it to your advisor, choose that entry and label it with Bookmark › typed yourself, such as "Advisor, round 1". "Submitted" when you submit, "Revision 1" after the review.
4. When you write the response letter, choose the "Submitted" entry and click the Now tab. Every file that changed since submission is listed, and Tell me what changed sums it up in one sentence, such as "Reworked the ‘3.2 Results’ section, 240 more words".
5. When you need "that version the advisor saw", type "advisor" into Search for what you remember. Bookmark names are searched.

Honestly, by file format

• Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx): read inside and described. At the level of headings, slide titles, sheet names and counts.
• Hangul (.hwp): recorded and returned exactly the same. The description is shallow, about "thesis.hwp changed".
• LaTeX (.tex), BibTeX (.bib), figures (.png, .pdf): any file is recorded and can be returned. The description is at the level of file names. If you already use Git, carry on — Octorium is closer to being for the co-author who does not know Git.

The data goes nowhere

Recording, comparing and going back all happen on this computer. When you ask for a description, what leaves the computer is a few hundred bytes: the names of the changed files and a summary such as titles and counts. The text of the document, cell values and the files themselves do not go. If your IRB or lab rules do not allow even that, turn on Settings › General › Offline mode. Descriptions then set out only the facts, and nothing is sent. The details are in the article "A work history for people whose documents cannot go to the cloud".

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