Recently I wanted to display the current date in a Views block, so that a visitor looking at the block at the 5th of July would read something like "July 5, 2018".
The use case is an academic online article with a block indicating "how to cite" that article. Here's a real world example (see the "view date" at the end):
How to cite Mani, Inderjeet: "Computational Narratology". In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): the living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. URL = http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/computational-narratology [view date: 5 Jul 2018].
I was surprised to not find a 'current date' field in Views but hoped then to get the current date with a token like [current-date:medium] in the "Global: custom text" field, but that's not the case: the custom text field doesn't support tokens.
So, I suggest to support general (e.g. 'Current date' and 'Site information') tokens in the Views "Global: custom text" field. I'm sure they would be helpful in various use cases, not only the one described above.
I think it's important to provide such values via the Views UI. Particularly because (afaik) there is no Views PHP module (and probably won't be) for Backdrop. Other implementations (like a custom Views field template) have several disadvantages, for instance the need to localize dates in PHP on non English sites even if dates have already been localized in Backdrop.
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Very possibly, I am looking at it now... Sorry I will be travelling away on that date. I will register, so I can look back
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Great news Francis. I'm glad I could help. Any chance we will see you at the upcoming Backdrop Live?
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Well your second Idea seems to have done the trick! So Simple!!!!! I can use this all over the place!!! Big Hug, and Thanks a Million, @yorkshirepudding !!!
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