On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 11:34 AM,  <hansbkk AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
>
>> Unless there are multiple versions of the same disk in circulation and you 
>> want them all synchronized, this is not the same problem that unison solves.
>
> Well it is true that different (intermittently-connected) people need
> access to the files; this is in fact the main reason they're doing it
> this way. If they were stored centrally and replicated out to the
> laptops, Unison *would* be an ideal solution for a certain subset of
> the data - standalone files, documents images etc, especially those
> that are read-mostly. However, it wouldn't be practical to have to
> train people on how to handle the conflict-resolution side when a
> given file's been changed in more than one location.

In that case, I can't help thinking that the right solution would be a
version control system designed for concurrent access with reasonable
client interfaces for the conflict resolution operation.   This is
especially true if it is useful to see who changed what, and when, and
for text content to be able to see the differences easily. Subversion
with tortoise svn as the client is the only one I know much about and
it might be a problem that it is extremely difficult to ever remove
any old data from the repository.  One of the 'distributed' VC's like
git or mercurial might be a better fit, but I don't know if any user
interfaces for them are as slick as tortoise.

> Fortunately (IMO)
> they seem happy to only have access to it one person at a time. There
> are also some database apps, and probably other stuff I don't even
> know about, so probably best I treat each drive as a black box rather
> than trying to disentangle their contents.
>
> In the old days I reckon Notes would have been perfect for a lot of this. . .

I think Notes is still around, but it is at least as much of a toolkit
that needs programming to match local needs as you would have
connecting a few different applications yourself.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell AT gmail DOT com

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