[OS X TeX] Re: Save date-time, not Print date

[Douglas Philips]

((The hand having writ has moved on, but the underlying issue has not.))
On 2007 Jan 6, at 12:54 PM, Maarten Sneep indited:
> Another option is to use the rcsinfo package. It gets its  
> information from an $Id$ tag which is updated by cvs (and rcs, but  
> don't use that). This means the last date on which you synchronised  
> your files with the repository is used. For small projects (say, a  
> letter) this is overkill, but for larger projects (say, a thesis) I  
> strongly recommend to use some sort of version control.
>
> And then the rcsinfo package solves both issues, as it can be set  
> to redefine \today to mean the date for the last synchronisation.

Not to pick on Maarten or anyone else who has posted suggestions on  
how to "work around" to get this to work, but all of those things are  
work-arounds...

I desperately, desperately hope this is something that has been  
added, or is add-able, in LuaTeX.

Maybe I want to know the date that the document was typeset... \date  
works fine for that.
Maybe I want to know the date of the .tex file that was typeset...  
<hack-a-rundums abound>.

How is it that \date is integral to beautiful typesetting and  
\modificationTimeOfThisFile isn't?
Oh. Right. Not related at all.

Many many aspects of TeX have everything to do with the state of  
computer hardware and software when TeX was written. Stuff that has  
nothing to do with beautiful typesetting, or with coherent document  
structure or writing.
None-the-less TeX is stuck in that past.
(Repeat prayers for LuaTeX)...

	--Doug


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