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Icon Time Stamping in Helix 7.0 | |
Introduction |
Helix 7.0 introduces another long-sought feature: icon time stamping. Each icon has two time-stamped properties: Creation date & Modification date, giving the collection designer an automatic way to track changes made to a collection. This technote describes the time stamping mechanism and its nuances. |
Time Stamp Display |
Time stamps are displayed in these places:
When a new collection or relation is created, the Created & Modified columns are enabled by default for List Mode. The modification date column is displayed first in order, as that is likely to be referenced much more frequently. The Created and Modified columns can be shown or hidden by turning on or off the corresponding Show … properties in the ‘Window Properties’ section of the Inspector, as seen in the image on the right. To access these properties for an open collection or relation window, clear the icon selection in the editor window. (Shift-Command-N) |
Updating Collections |
When a collection is updated to Helix 7.0, the Modification date column is automatically turned on for the collection and existing relation windows. The Creation date column is turned off by default, since the value there will always be undefined. An undefined date is indicated by a hyphen (“-”) character. Collections in Helix 6.2.4 and earlier have no time stamp property, and updating is unable to bend the space-time continuum to determine when existing icons were created and modified. Consequently, the creation & modification dates for icons in an updated collection are undefined. (“-”) |
Updating Time Stamps |
Time stamping is fully automatic. There is nothing the collection designer must do. Creation and Modification dates are updated according to the following rules:
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Applying Structure |
When applying structure, whether by copy/paste or by choosing a clipping from the © menu, the modification date timestamp for icons that are modified should be updated to the time the clipping is applied. Icons that are new to the collection should also have a creation date of the time the clipping is applied. We have a report that this is not working as intended, and are investigating. See R9316 in techdb for updates. |
AppleScript Notes |
Columns can be enabled and disabled, and their order rearranged, via AppleScript. See R7545: List Mode Column Features in Helix RADE 7.0 for details. A script that selects all icons modified after a specified date is available from our free AppleScripts page. |