topic Re: Versioning and file formats in Alfresco Archive

Versioning and file formats

theorbix — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:28:35 GMT

Does Alfresco allow to store different versions of a document in different formats?For example, would it be possible to create a document in Word format, and then store version 2 and 3 of the same document still in Word format, but then store version 4 in PDF format?Can this create problems to the

Re: Versioning and file formats

tommorris — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:08:51 GMT

Yep - there's no problems doing this.

You may like to change the name of the file extension between versions, just so that a user isn't confused why a '*.pdf' file launches a MS Word file.

Re: Versioning and file formats

theorbix — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:21:42 GMT

Thanks for the reply… can you clarify a bit the last sentence ("You may like to change the name of the file extension between versions, just so that a user isn't confused why a '*.pdf' file launches a MS Word file.")?

Re: Versioning and file formats

tommorris — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:18:11 GMT

If you upload an MS Word file and call it 'myfile.doc', it will have a mime-type of something like 'application/msword'.
Then enable versioning.
Now update the content by uploading a completely different file, one that is already in PDF format. If you check the properties of this file, you'll see it's mime-type has now changed to something like 'application/pdf'. If you now select that file to download, it will open up Adobe Reader instead.
If you open up the version history, you'll see two versions of the file, each will open using a different application because they both have a different mime-type.

So, the only possible confusion, is that just because you've uploaded a different binary format and changed it's mime-type, the file name is still the original 'myfile.doc', so you may like to rename it to 'myfile.pdf'.

Re: Versioning and file formats

theorbix — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:00:32 GMT

Yup! Understood…

Well, yes, if the mime/type is attached to each version, that's perfect.

Re: Versioning and file formats

pjcaracuel — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:22:15 GMT

Hi,

Sorry for re-open this ticket.

So, the only possible confusion, is that just because you've uploaded a different binary format and changed it's mime-type, the file name is still the original 'myfile.doc', so you may like to rename it to 'myfile.pdf'.

If you rename myfile.doc to myfile.pdf, could you have a problem for do it?

In any case, I think it isn´t a good practice renaming version of a document.

Regards