Creation date

[Harbinger]

As i'm cleaning up old leftover modules, it would help me to know their creation dates quickly. This info could probably be retrieved from the modules file info, but it would be great to see it from within MPT, maybe in the Song Properties in the Version Info group, or perhaps in the General tab near the file info...

[Saga Musix]

Impulse Tracker actually implemented something like this in the IT format, however the format of this data isn't documented at all and nobody but Jeff Lim probably knows how it works. Deciphering this data block might be the first step to adding this feature.

EDIT: In fact, the format of this IT save history is now 99% reverse-engineered, so it won't be any problem to implement this feature now for IT and MPTM files!

[Harbinger]

Well that's cool. I was wondering, if this gets implemented, is this the original creation date according to the tracker or according to the OS?

The reason i ask is, i noticed that when i copied the files from my old computer to the new one, the file's creation date was changed to the date when it was planted into the new computer, rather than when it was first created by an application (this is the opposite behavior of Mac documents BTW). But we often need to know when we actually came up with the idea...

[Saga Musix]

It saves a list of dates, so yes, they are preserved when copying/etc. Even if you set your system clock to the year 2025, they will be preserved.

[Saga Musix]

Can you please check if this was implemented as expected in the latest stuff builds? http://sagagames.de/stuff/mptrack.exe
Note that there will be no history for already existing files (unless they were made in Impulse Tracker). The edit history can be viewed by using View -> Edit History.

[Harbinger]

Note that there will be no history for already existing files (unless they were made in Impulse Tracker). The edit history can be viewed by using View -> Edit History.

Well, shucks, that's what i needed -- to view the creation dates of existing files.

Hmm, will new files save their creation date in the MPTM file?

(I'll check out this build when i get home. Thanks for the link.)

[Saga Musix]

You will get a date added to the history every time the file is loaded and saved, so also when creating new files. I cannot and don't want to go beyond that, because adding the file creation date as the hard drive reports it would break the semantics of the edit history as the IT format provides it.

[Harbinger]

Fair enough.

Thanks for the quick turnaround too I'll check it out tonight.

UPDATE: The creation and modification data is indeed saved with all tracks built from 1.19.0.12 and higher. Looks very good and will be useful for the future, altho i can't get the same info in MPT from older modules.