Hurrah! Better filename versioning on the Mac!

Just noticed something under Snow Leopard, but it may have always been there:

Whenever I am editing a long and important document, I always periodically create a new version of the document and retain the prior version.  Probably a habit I picked up in the early Windows 3.1 days, it still saves my bacon from time to time when the laptop goes teats up.

The process tends to be: save the document (say, “My File 3”), exit the program, duplicate the document in the finder, rename the new version from “My File 3 copy” to “My file 4”, then launch “My file 4” to go back to editing.

So for duplicating the document, you have two options:

• The File | Duplicate menu (or Cmd-D)
• Copy and Paste

With either approach, you get the same “My File 3 copy”.  But I just noticed that if you Option-drag the file within the same folder, it’ll automatically increment the file version for you - for instance, creating a new “My File 4” from the original “My File 3”.

Hot damn!  I’m saving, like, dozens of seconds a week here!