XnView Software

Here is an approach to implementing version control in XnView. XnView could intervene when a user closes a changed file and offer to save/append a version number.

As simple as that.

Here is the current dialog:



... and here is an alternate dialog that I would find very useful instead:

Good approach and drafts, John. From my point of view the version control should be much less present in dialogs and be more a backup system than a version control. Especially in some situations like lossless crop a backup can be very important and essential to prevent the user from image loss.

By default, the backup could be set to "Keep one backup file" when saving. This default might be changed so that you have a specific or even unlimited number of versions. Also, it might make sense not to overwrite an existing backup with a new backup, so the backup would be always the original.

The backup approach would keep things simple and automatic, (power) users could still change the backup setting and thus make the backup work like a version control.

Just my 2 cents...

I mostly hope for automatic file numbering.

XnView would examine a filename for numeric values (perhaps positioned just left of the extension), then propose an automatically incremented value in Save As.

But as you probably know by now, I'm a big fan of lots of options in dialogs.

If there was a way to send XnView a file save command with a specific filename, I could write a generic versioning tool that could run from the toolbar...