This Preface explains a little about the TortoiseSVN project, the community of people who work on it, and the licensing conditions for using it and distributing it.
The Chapter 1, Introduction explains what TortoiseSVN is, what it does, where it comes from and the basics for installing it on your PC.
In Chapter 2, Basic Concepts we give a short introduction to the Subversion revision control system which underlies TortoiseSVN. This is borrowed from the documentation for the Subversion project and explains the different approaches to version control, and how Subversion works.
Even most Subversion users will never have to set up a server themselves. The next chapter deals with how to set up such a server, and is useful for administrators.
The chapter on Chapter 4, The Repository explains how to set up a local repository, which is useful for testing Subversion and TortoiseSVN using a single PC. It also explains a bit about repository administration which is also relevant to repositories located on a server.
The Chapter 5, Daily Use Guide is the most important section as it explains all the main features of TortoiseSVN and how to use them. It takes the form of a tutorial, starting with checking out a working copy, modifying it, committing your changes, etc. It then progresses to more advanced topics.
Chapter 6, The SubWCRev Program is a separate program included with TortoiseSVN which can extract the information from your working copy and write it into a file. This is useful for including build information in your projects.
The Appendix B, How Do I... section answers some common questions about performing tasks which are not explicitly covered elsewhere.
The section on Appendix D, Automating TortoiseSVN shows how the TortoiseSVN GUI dialogs can be called from the command line. This is useful for scripting where you still need user interaction.
The Appendix E, Command Line Interface Cross Reference give a correlation
between TortoiseSVN commands and their equivalents in the Subversion
command line client svn.exe.