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Comment by forca | Hacker News Reader

This is a very good reason to never use software in the so-called "cloud". I also remember years ago when someone showed me "Track Changes" in MS Word and other programs and how you could go back and look at, say, a bid offer and see if everything was on the up and up. You could see, esp. if the document was a form letter or canned response, to which other companies were offered different terms, you name it.

I dislike revision-able software for a number of reasons. Privacy is the foremost reason. Yes, yes, "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear..." That old chestnut gets trotted out every time someone worries about security or privacy.

Since about 2000, I keep my documents in plain text only on an encrypted drive backed up several times over -- none of the backups are online, but I'm still good if my house burns down, my machines get stolen, you name it.

No, just no.

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You can also take advantage of all the great bonuses of revisions and then before sending the document just copy/paste the content into a new document that doesn't include the revisions. That seems sensible too.

I'm pretty sure you can just "Accept all changes" before saving the document too and the change history will be cleared.

Does sound like a very fragile workflow (there's no reasonable way to tell a full-history doc from a "publish grade" doc by glancing at the file on the filesystem.

Keeping everything in proper version control (possibly unzipped, to give usable diffs even for office document formats -- or in something like markdown) -- would at least rise the bar a bit -- there'd be different process for sending a single version of a file, and sending all versions of (all) [a] file(s).

I suppose if you're already running an internal mail server, you could just do filtering there, making sure no version/history-rich documents pass out that way...

Yes, I know about this, and thank you for reminding me, but in the end, I just don't trust software.

I really do like old school and I stick with it. I write most of my docs as text in either vi or nano. I neither want nor need formatting beyond the basics. My CV is the only document I own that has formatting, and I used LibreOffice for it. It's a single page.

You should consider using LaTeX.

That's cool, but lots of people require .doc. It's just easier to use a word variant.

I try my best to break people of that awful habit. I also find that I'm usually happy enough dealing only with people who can manage to open a pdf (or any other non-proprietary format).

Yes. I hate receiving documents in .docx or any other proprietary format, especially if I have not agreed to that format prior to receiving them. I like plain text if at all possible. I'll happily receive PDFs because I can view them under Linux/BSD, but others piss me off. People THINK MS Word is the de facto business standard. It isn't. Text and PDF are the standards. Never had issues with either.

I had a friend tell me my CV should be in PDF and locked down to prevent recruiters and others from changing it to something other than the original. I know recruiters are fond of changing things up without informing you.

>locked down to prevent recruiters and others from changing it to something other than the original

Can you elaborate? Why would they want to change your CV?

Either to make it better (recruitment agencies, etc), or to make it worse (we want to hire <x> but we have to hire the best-qualified person)

Unscrupulous recruiters will sometimes add extra skills or bulk up your experience.

You can "print" the text file to a pdf for your CV and get the best of both worlds. My department only allows pdf uploads for CVs, so that's my approach.

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