[Zope3-dev] Re: setting modified on create

[Garrett Smith]

Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
> Garrett Smith writes:
>  > I believe it's fairly common practice to set a file's 'modified' 
>  > attribute when the item is created -- i.e. 'created' and 'modified' are 
>  > initially set and indentical.
> 
> This is usually done somewhere deep in the filesystem, but yes.  It is
> not done by the application (neither value is normally set by the
> app).
> 
>  > Does anyone see a problem doing this in Zope3 with objects on create?
>  > 
>  > One side effect, though minor, is that we can remove the 'created' 
>  > column in the folder/contents view.
> 
> This is not clear.  Most directory listings for normal filesystems
> don't include the creation time, but it remains available.  Do you not
> consider it reasonable to show the creation time?  One thing that can
> be interesting is determining whether an object has been maintained
> since the initial creation; the creation date allows that.  (So would
> some mark, possibly an icon, indicating that the object has been
> modified since the initial creation.)

I just mean that we can save some additional space in the default 
folder/contents view by omitting the creation column. The underlying 
'created' metadata is certainly something we should keep.

Personally, I'm very rarely (if ever) interested in 'created' -- 
'modified' unambiguously tells me when a user (or user operation, e.g. 
paste) last 'touched' the item.

As for displaying the creation time, I agree, there is some value, but I 
think most users don't expect to see it. E.g. this is something that can 
be configured in file system viewers, but is generally not displayed by 
default. If there's additional capability that comes out of this, it 
might be the ability to specify additional metadata properties as 
columns in the view.

  -- Garrett