how i failed to present on using DVCS for archival metadata

mark a. matienzo (anarchivist)the new york public library

http://flickr.com/photos/pbo31/96798574/

i failed, epically

http://flickr.com/photos/anarchivist/2679920292

what was the problem?

http://flickr.com/photos/mccord/68214477/

not dvcs

http://flickr.com/photos/iandavid/3036898936/

picking a dvcs wasn’t hard

http://flickr.com/photos/bionerd/2910589154/

mercurial

why hg?

http://flickr.com/photos/nodens2k/3180613206/

fast

http://flickr.com/photos/wallyg/451576049/

simple

http://flickr.com/photos/gtstuff/88422470/

why not some other dvcs?

http://flickr.com/photos/gregous/450622287/

git

http://flickr.com/photos/44458147@N00/263228000/

bzr

http://flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/1396181629/

monotone

http://flickr.com/photos/7891209@N04/1794529842/

http://flickr.com/photos/unavoidablegrain/2430839352/

workflow was easy

http://flickr.com/photos/paulnich/386644273/

diffing & patching

http://flickr.com/photos/yanivg/95442635/

diff is line-based

http://flickr.com/photos/opal_krusch/2964612368/

xml has hierarchy

http://flickr.com/photos/glenpa/1733235059/

diffing xml

http://flickr.com/photos/caitlinburke/2245965451/

canonical xml?

http://flickr.com/photos/sean_oneill/3117627070/

several choices

sample implementations(there are many more)

• ssddiff

• xdiff

• logilab xmldiff

• ladiff

• xydiff/jxydiff

• xmlunit

• deltaxml

• microsoft xmldiff

• xml treediff

• sun diffmk

http://flickr.com/photos/trainor/451799414/

http://flickr.com/photos/ktylerconk/3097200074

expressing patches

http://flickr.com/photos/manfrys/2226178289/

no standard way

patch/merge formats

• xupdate

• deltaxml

• logilab edit script (not xml)

• other edit script formats

http://flickr.com/photos/ppdigital/2058130092/

no interoperability

http://flickr.com/photos/epc/418915620

hard to understand

http://flickr.com/photos/jwm_angrymonkey/2467009351

hard to visualize

http://flickr.com/photos/darabidduckie/2733770664

sorry

http://flickr.com/photos/thetruthabout/2668888527

(all photos CC licensed)