Some centuries ago, it was the practice of a scribe in an English chancery to make a complete copy of a completed writ in the most formal script on the best quality of parchment. This was the engrossment or engross – the ‘real’ version of the document. All earlier drafts had been mere working material and were thrown away. The process of producing a writ had to have a clear end point to avoid becoming three or more documents of roughly equal status. The process of affixing a chancery seal (UXDAuthorityLinkXDU0XDU) involved not just the seal itself but the entire process of writing out the document.
The problem has been around for a long time. The word “copy” can refer to both an action and an object. Therefore, by their very nature, the act of making a copy of a document can create a second document. Which one is more important?
The carbon-copy era provided a physical representation to the bottom of the smudged sheet of where it ranked in comparison to the top copy. The copying press of the Victorian era provided a means of producing very thin facsimiles, which are quite different from the original document. Each of these methods of reproducing a document found ways to highlight the hierarchy of the various copies of the document. With the files of today, one person may edit a copy of a document that they have saved on their desktop. Another person may mark up a printed copy of a document. A third person may email what they believe to be the latest version of the document. There is a useful background explanation of how medieval documents were formally authenticated.
File management software performs exactly the same ritual but as a routine automated process for designating the current version of a file and for storing all previous versions in a file archive. A useful reference for File Management Software is watermarktech.co.uk/file-management-software.
The problem has always been the same but the ceremony has become more opaque.