kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 10:29:38AM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> Why would you need to change the file unless you were planning to put
> the date generation option in the file?  I'm not sure this setting
> really belongs in the board file.  It strikes me as application level
> setting.  If you want to add it to the board file, add a new token or
> tokens to TITLE_BLOCK::Format().  Something like (edit-date auto/manual)
> would do the the trick.  You will have to add code to read it correctly

I'm not sure I got what are you meaning... at the moment my plan is:
- Comment out the automatic date update
- Reenable the date writing to the board
- Add an edit box to fill the date by hand
- Profit:D

In contrast to *now* it doesn't change a thing if you don't fill out the
box (backward compatibility:D). If you want to fill out the date is
kept, and saved, and shown, plotted whatever.

If you (user) want automatic date update you (user) *wait* until we
decide how to do the thing. I feel that manual date entry is better than
no date at all.

As for the 'automatic date set' I agree that it should be an application
level option. In preference/general where there is 'Magnetic Pads:
Never/When/Always', 'Magnetic Tracks: Never/When/Always' we could add
'Automatic Date Update: Never/When ???/Always when saving', for example.
The ??? is due further discussion (i.e. deciding when the board is
'modified').
>
> from the file in PCB_PARSER::parseTITLE_BLOCK().  You'll also need to be
> prepared to answer the bug reports that will happen when someone using
> an older rev attempts to open the file with the new setting.  Such is
> the glamorous life of an open source developer. ;)

The title block calls are already there, just commented. The bug report
is actually from a colleague of mine who noticed the missing date from
the printout, so it's a preemptive strike :D

BTW the life of the commercial software programmer can be even worse
(like inheriting some old S/390 assembly routine to talk in EBCDIC to an
ASCII talking ATM machine using the awful SNA APPC calls). Yet I feel
that IBM assembly is more elegant than java :D

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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