For you new Lion users out there, you may have experienced the new File Management framework in-place within Lion in some Lion-enabled applications, such as Pages and Numbers.

With the introduction of system-wide Auto Save and Document Versioning, new terminology is introduced with respect to this new system. Rather than the decade-old and extremely familiar ‘Save’ and ‘Save As…’, we now get ‘Save’ or ‘Save a Version’, ‘Duplicate’, and ‘Revert’.

This new terminology is definitely confusing to those of us who are well-versed in the world of computing. To get up to speed with the new technologies that Apple is deploying, TUAW has a write-up on Lion’s new Auto Save and Versions feature, and a pair of infographics on the ‘old’ and ‘new’ file management systems.

Here, I’ll briefly explain how to achieve what you used to be able to do with the old system with new commands; command mapping in geek speak.

’Save…’ is unchanged between both systems—a new file is created with the name specified in the classic Save dialog box.

’Save As…’ is now replaced with two-steps—’Duplicate’ followed by ‘Save…’. While this change may seem counter-productive, there’s actually a hidden feature behind the change. Should you forget to duplicate a file before making changes to it, selecting the same command after making changes will cause Lion to present a dialog box asking if you would like to 1) ‘Duplicate and Revert’, 2) ‘Cancel’, or 3) just ‘Duplicate’.

’Duplicate and Revert’ creates a new file with the changes you’ve already made and reverts those changes since last save in the original file. ‘Duplicate’, on the other, just functions like ‘Save As…’ in the old system.

This actually can save you a lot of trouble from accidentally making unintended changes and having to transfer them onto a duplicate manually.

A new command introduced, ‘Save a Version’, creates a snapshot of the document at that point in time (without creating a new file), allowing you to revisit via the ‘Browse all Versions’ interface. It’s great for bookmarking certain changes that you may want to revert, especially when you’re about to make changes that involve data loss.

I hope this reduces agony during the switch to the world of Auto Save and Versions. Hopefully, I’ll never ever have to version my files manually by filenames in the near future.