[Qgis-developer] Expressions in print composer

[Hugo Mercier]

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for your feedback.

Le 25/09/2012 11:13, Andreas Neumann a écrit :
> Hi Hugo,
>
> I am open to replacements of $CURRENT_DATE(). We'd need to make sure,
> however, that the new proposal of [% $now %] would also allow a way to
> set the date format, e.g. german date, french date, english date or some
> specific user defined format.

Functions like day(), month() and so on are good candidates.
However, it misses some kinds of formatting (month and day in letters 
for instance).
So a new conversion function may be needed, something like dateformat( 
$now, "ddd MMM yyyy").

> Is your proposed change in line with what other text replacements of the
> new expression builder do, e.g. in the label placement?

It uses the same mechanism as the one used for actions on layers for 
instance or for HTML annotations on the main canvas.

> Would the label in print composer gain a new GUI that would allow the
> user to specify an expression?

Ideally yes.

>
> How about backwards compatibility of $CURRENT_DATE() ? Although it
> wasn't well documented, I taught a lot of people about using
> $CURRENT_DATE() - would the old syntax still work with the new proposal?

Ok, that was the main point of my email. To keep or not to keep backward 
compatibility.

Judging by the first remarks, I am going to keep the backward 
compatibility and add this dateformat() equivalent if I have time to.

-- 
Hugo Mercier
Oslandia