All the arguments you give are based on shortcomings of the tools: Microsoft Word doesn't have version control, Wikipedia stores versions in a database. > But

All the arguments you give are based on shortcomings of the tools: Microsoft Word doesn't have version control, Wikipedia stores versions in a database. > But the ultimate goal is to produce a version of the file. The fact that the end result is a version doesn't mean versions should be the main object. If you add a semicolon to a file, the actions you do are "press the ; key", not "create an entire version from scratch that has a semicolon there". > If you want a diff management system, play around with quilt You're doing it again! Why pick the least suitable tools for the jobs? Quilt is not a patch-based version control system, Pijul and Darcs are.