Snarky, off-the-cuff review: Perforce
(or "Perforce is fine - so long as you know what 'Head' means.")
I'm sneaking this entry in during a Perforce training session. Perforce is for programmers - it's a versioning control system. One of the various tools we use to manage teams of people working with files from the same project. We're learning to use its Windows GUI.
It's a very powerful tool. I'm glad we'll be using it.
It's just... I have to ignore some previous lingustic and metaphoric experiences in the coding world in order to use the GUI (and explain it to co-workers). I don't believe this will prevent me from using this product (I have to restate: it's powerful) but its unique references and naming conventions will prevent me from integrating it into my toolset as seamlessly as other systems I've used. Though it's a little silly to do so without screenshots, I can walk through why that is in short order.
First thing you may want to do: Log in. Pretty self-explanatory.
Second thing you may want to do: Get the latest version of all the files of a project you're working on.
Simple, just right-click on the project and select "Sync to Head Revision."
Excuse me? Took me minutes to figure that out - but I am a bit dense (my defense: rock star more than programmer). However, why not "Sync to latest version" or "Update" (like CVS) or "Get Latest Version" (as in the case of VSS)?
Also, calling the base version unit a revision resulted in some confusion for me. It suggested a file that's already been revised. Many files in any large project have never been touched or revised. Version works better for me because it mirrors the software model and naming convention. Maybe my comfort with that term is unique, though.
And, Dear Programmer, maybe you'd like to rename a file? Also simple, just right-click and select "Integrate using Filespec..." from the context menu.
So "Integrate using Filespec..." encompasses "Rename"? Easy to remember. Sure - won't be looking that up in Help -oh- every time.
So much for programming: I'm gonna retreat to my studio and mash together some electropop.*
It's a beautiful robot world these days. Beautiful robots recommend the following studio setup: MIDI, Titanium PowerBook, Cubase SX, Reason, the urge to kill our inferior human creators...