Date fields 6.2.1 -- what is "current date"? Don't you mean "lastedit" date?

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Section 6 notes a "creation date", and section 6.2.1 defines
a "date field" that is the "current date".  Yet for most
word processing documents, neither dates are interesting;
most people will want the "date last edited".
And the material in section 6.2.1 doesn't allow the specification
of the creation date, even though section 6 intro implies
otherwise -- it only notes how to include the current date.

Section 6 needs to changed from
"Creation dates... A creation date..." to
"Dates: This includes date last edited, current date,
creation date, and so on."

Section 6.2.1:
This needs to modified to support display of many dates,
not just the current date. Perhaps add a new field to
select the kind of date that is included?
This should at least allow the selection of the
last-edited date (that should be the same as the
"date" field in the metadata), creation date, current date (now),
printed-last date, and so on.  A "reviewed-by" date might
be nice too (though that would have to be supported in the
metadata).

The critical thing is that this field needs to support
the "last-edited" time.  I print many documents with
"automatic" dates, and can't easily compare them because
they print out the "current" date (which is the date I printed it),
instead of the date the document was last edited
(which is the date most people really want).

This may need a clarification in the text somewhere, that
merely loading a file SHOULD NOT modify the date it was edited.

--- David A. Wheeler