How to display the dates in the \PrintChanges' changes?

Question

An information I'm often missing when I have a look at the "Change History" of a package/classe is the dates of the changes because, IMHO, just the version number is not informative enough: if I could remember I already used this package/class before a given date (and hence look carefully the changes since this date), I couldn't remember what was its last version number I used.

As the \changes macro used for the changes records contains the date:

\changes{⟨version number⟩}{⟨date⟩}{⟨change⟩}

I guess it shouldn't be that difficult to display the ⟨date⟩s, in addition to the ⟨version number⟩s in the list provided by \PrintChanges command. But even after a look at gglo.ist or the .glo generated file, I have no idea how to do that and hence my question: how to display the dates in the \PrintChanges' changes?

Answer 1

\changes internally uses \changes@ which is defined as

\def\changes@#1#2#3{%
 \protected@edef\@tempa{%
  \noexpand\glossary{#1\levelchar
   \ifx\saved@macroname\@empty
    \space\actualchar\generalname
   \else
    \expandafter\@gobble\saved@macroname
    \actualchar
    \string\verb\quotechar*\verbatimchar\saved@macroname\verbatimchar
   \fi
   :\levelchar #3}}%
 \@tempa
 \endgroup
 \@esphack
}

You just need to redefine this with #2 inserted into \glossary. For example:

\renewcommand*{\changes@}[3]{%
 \protected@edef\@tempa{%
  \noexpand\glossary{#1 (#2)\levelchar
   \ifx\saved@macroname\@empty
    \space\actualchar\generalname
   \else
    \expandafter\@gobble\saved@macroname
    \actualchar
    \string\verb\quotechar*\verbatimchar\saved@macroname\verbatimchar
   \fi
   :\levelchar #3}}%
 \@tempa
 \endgroup
 \@esphack
}