[Techtalk] Version Control for Docs?

[nicole]

Right now I'm using Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS, not to be confused
with Volume Shadow Copy Services) for a documentation repository.
Originally, I was told by an ex-Microsoftie that it did diffs of things
like word documents, but alas that was found untrue after migration out of
CVS.

Source is all maintained in CVS, which works well for source, since you
have to check it all out to build and modify any given module. The only
problem with documentation is that you don't *need* to check out the whole
tree for docs, you may just need a single file. This is the one good thing
about VSS.

I can move my docs into CVS, which I would really prefer, but I like the
usability of only being able to grab a single file. I do have CVSweb and
bonsai/lxr installed on the CVS server, but you can't really check files
in that way.

So, my question is:

1) Is there another VCS that is going to do what I want (only download a
"skeleton" of the repository, and select the full module, file, directory
you want to download)?

or,

2) Can I make CVS do this?

or,

3) Is there a front-end for CVS that can do this (web-based would even be
fine)?

If I switch to another VCS for docs, I would prefer it ran on linux rather
than Windows, and can be easily backed up (which is generally provided by
requirement #1 anyway).

Something that does diffs of word documents and such would be nice, but I
really won't hold my breath (maybe SharePoint can do this). I trust
engineers to make comments and that's good enough for now. They're used to
it ;o)

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I really can't stand VSS.

Thanks!
-nicole