Revised5

Revised5 is a software tool for structured revision management and collaborative editing. It is the fifth release in the Revised series, designed to provide deterministic revision histories, fine-grained patches, and auditable change trails across text, data, and lightweight assets.

Development and origins: Produced by the RevisionLab consortium with roots in data curation and software tooling, Revised5 emphasizes reproducibility and backward compatibility. It introduces a graph-based revision model and improved merge semantics, building on the concepts of earlier revisions.

Key features: Incremental revisions and patch-based diffs; semantic merge with content-level conflict detection; offline mode with later synchronization; role-based access control and audit logs; REST and GraphQL APIs; plugin support and scripting; and broad format compatibility including JSON, YAML, Markdown, and text.

Architecture: The core engine uses a directed acyclic graph where each node is a state and edges denote lineage. A metadata store records authorship, timestamps, and governance policies. The system supports modular plugins for import/export, validation, and custom diff rules.

Applications and adoption: Targeted at software documentation, legal texts, and academic archives, Revised5 aims for traceable edits and reproducible outputs. Adoption varies by organization, with some reporting steep setup costs and others valuing the auditability.

Reception and limitations: Reviewers praise auditability and consistency but note complexity, potential performance issues on large revision graphs, and a learning curve. Ongoing work focuses on indexing efficiency, storage optimization, and improved user experience.

See also: Revised series, version control systems, patch-based diffs, graph-based revision models.