title: How to use Mercurial for version control of text documents?
body: <p><em>This is not exactly a programming question, however I think it fits here better than in the <a href="https://tex.stackexchange.com/">TeX group</a></em></p>
  
  <p>I want to use version control for keeping track of changes of text files (which are used to create <code>LaTeX</code> output. (As I am no programmer, I don't have deeper experience with version control system yet.)
  I'd like to use <code>Mercurial</code> for that, and I'm working on MacOS X 10.6.</p>
  
  <p>The files are about job applications, so mostly 3 files for each company: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>a letter of motivation</li>
  <li>a CV </li>
  <li>and one file with the diplomas, certificates, ...</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I have several questions concerning practical things:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I have already one directory containing many subdirectories (one for each company).  Each subdirectory contains those 2 or 3 *.tex files as well as the auxiliary files and the resulting pdfs. (and sometimes some other files with information about the company).<br>
  If I want to add the already existing files in the new repository and creating a revision from each one (there about 15 different versions), how can I do that?<br>
  <em>Sure, the relations of "parent" and "child" will not be visible, but at least I can do a diff and see what changed and each one would have a revision number.</em></li>
  <li>Can I leave those files in the original directories and add them to the version control system, or do they have to be in a special place?<br>
  (I'd like to add other files to those directories, which will not be added to the version control and I wonder </li>
  <li>Can I give a "name" to a revision (e. g. the company name) for easier finding them afterwards?</li>
  <li>What would be the best workflow for creating new revisions?<br>
  I'd choose an exisiting revision from the repository, export it to a new folder for the new company, change the tex files and then commit it back to the repo?!</li>
  </ol>