Steve wrote:
> 
> Something I really miss from my VMS days is the sequential numbering
> of saved files, so that if I'm working on a scene file and save it
> it would save it as something like roundabout.pov;0000 and the next
> time I save it would write to roundabout.pov;0001 etc if I set my
> directory history to 20 that means that I'll always have the 20 most
> recent saves, a simple purge on the commandline will leave me with
> only the most recent files.  I'm sure that in bash it's possible to
> write something that will do the same job though the file naming
> will be slightly different to the way it is on VMS.
> 
> It'd be good if such a script could be called from pov's command line
> to let it usse the most recent for the current render you'd also need
> your editor to be able to understand this so maybe it's not going to
> be all that easy to implement.  I'll look into this myself but I don't
> promise to be able to come up with anything.

Why not use something like RCS (CVS would probably be overkill)? 
Depending on the editor you are using, you could probably configure it
to check in the file every time it saves, and you can easily delete the
archived versions if you decide you don't need them.  Using RCS won't
clutter up your directory with lots of copies of the same file either. 
I haven't used plain RCS recently, but here's some basic tips:

Make a directory called RCS (all in caps) in the directory where you
have your file.

The following command will see if the file filename.pov has changed at
all from the last copy saved, and if so, it will archive it.
ci -l -q -mauto -t-auto filename.pov

To view a list of all the copies which have been archived, use
rlog filename.pov

If you're not already familiar with RCS, take a look at the man pages
for rcs, ci, rlog, and co.  The commands I gave you above should be
enough to get you started though.

Ken

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