kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/01/2013 12:18 PM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> I was testing stuff and well... in the kicad_brd file the sheet date is
> not saved. I found this pearl in TITLE_BLOCK::Format:
> 
>     /* version control users were complaining, see mailing list.
>     if( !m_date.IsEmpty() )
>         aFormatter->Print( aNestLevel+1, "(date %s)\n",
>                             aFormatter->Quotew( m_date ).c_str() );
>     */
> 
> What is a field useful for if it's not saved? It always come up empty, in this
> way.
> 
> In many companies the date on a drawing is actually more important than the
> drawing version number (in fact ISO/EN 7200:2004 requires the date of issue,
> which is legally binding for a number of things). Other dates (approval,
> modifications and so on) are optional but the "document date" is mandatory.
> 
> I think the best solution would be putting the date as an editable field (with
> the title, company and so on): this would eliminate the localization issue and
> in the mean time allow a 'significant' date to be set (not necessarily that's
> the last modified date, for a number of reasons). Also the vcs users wouldn't
> have to complain (I don't see the problem if a date changes in a versioned
> file... maybe they don't like it).


OK, I remember now.


Your suggestion of having it editable is OK for me.  But is not OK for others.  There are
4 schools of thought, and funny thing is you and I are in the same camp after all.


1) Make it editable, and fixed, not dynamically updated.  If I put in a date, it stays
that way forever on disk too.


2) Make it dynamic (i.e. automatically updated), reflective of the last time of board
*modification*, not last time of save.


3) Make it dynamic (i.e. automatically updated), reflective of the last time of board *save*.


4) Remove it, keep it out of the file, until the dispute is settled.


We were at 4).  If we uncomment the code, we get 2), and then I get yelled at again by the
VCS users.


I don't want to keep getting yelled at.  :)   It gets hard to remember being yelled at.

Jean-Pierre is in camp 2).

I am in camp 1) or 4), just because the VCS users will eventually win, I recognize that,
and I want the problem to go away.  I use VCS too, and reporting a new date for every
change is not especially helpful to me, with my VCS user hat on, and advocating for those
I know will complain later.  Been there, and had that conversation already.


Help wanted.  :)


Dick