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Re: Title block date in pcbnew

 

On 1 May 2013 21:26, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.  :)
>
>
I have something on my list for the far away future, unless anybody gets
there first and that's variable substitution for strings. It would be nice
if we could have text with variable expansion, such as things like
${SheetTitle}, ${ModifiedDate}, ${ProjectName} etc.

We could add this to the shelf of "Cool stuff to do in the future when
everything else is going well". It would take a lot of work to do, and I
always wanted to implement it in both eeschema and PCBNEW.

Best Regards, Brian.

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