Nicola L.C. Talbot
5 Dec 2006
\today
,
and provides commands for displaying the current time.
If you only want the
time commands but not the date changing commands, you can pass
the option nodate to the package.
Since version 2.4, the datetime package has been
separated into two packages: datetime and
fmtcount. When I originally created this package,
I defined the commands, \ordinal
etc which could be used
in the definition of \today
. Since then, I have extended
the number of commands available that can be used to display the
value of a LaTeX counter, however it seems more appropriate to
define all these counter-related commands in a separate package.
The fmtcount package is now distributed separately
from the datetime package, and will also need to
be installed.
As from version 2.42, the datetime package is now compatible with babel, however you must load the datetime package after the babel package. For example:
\usepackage[francais]{babel} \usepackage{datetime}
\today
. The change can be localised by placing the
declaration within a group.
Day Month Year formats:
The declaration \longdate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
Wednesday 8th March, 2000
if the package option dayofweek is used, or
8th March, 2000 if the package option
nodayofweek is used.
The declaration \shortdate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
Wed 8th Mar, 2000 if the package option
dayofweek is used, or 8th Mar, 2000
if the package option nodayofweek is used.
The declaration \ddmmyyyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce
the current date displayed in the form 08/03/2000
The declaration \dmyyyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce
the current date displayed in the form 8/3/2000
The declaration \ddmmyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce
the current date displayed in the form 08/03/00
The declaration \dmyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce
the current date displayed in the form 8/3/00
The declaration \textdate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form:
Wednesday the Eighth of March, Two Thousand if the package option
dayofweek is used, or Eighth of March, Two Thousand if
the package option nodayofweek is used.
Month Day Year formats:
The declaration \usdate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
March 8, 2000. (As TeX and LaTeX do by default.)
The declaration \mmddyyyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
03/08/2000
The declaration \mdyyyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
3/8/2000
The declaration \mmddyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
03/08/00
The declaration \mdyydate
will redefine
\today
to produce the current date displayed in the form
3/8/00
In addition, the declarations \date
lang are
available for all languages defined either by
calling babel prior to datetime or by
passing the language name as an option to datetime.
See later
if you want to define your own customised date format.
As from version 2.43, the numerical date formats (such as
\ddmmyyyydate
) use the command
\dateseparator
to separate the numbers. So, for example,
if you want to hyphens instead of slashes, you can do:
\renewcommand{\dateseparator}{-}
\currenttime
.
The format can be changed using the declaration
\settimeformat{
style}
,
where style is the name of the format1. Available
formats are:
New time formats can be defined using the command:
\newtimeformat{
name}{
format}
where name is the name of the new format (used in
\settimeformat
), and format is how to format the
time. Within format you can use the counters
HOUR (number of hours after midnight), MINUTE
(number of minutes past the hour), HOURXII (number of
hours after midnight/midday), TOHOUR (the next hour)
and TOMINUTE (number of minutes to the next hour), and
the corresponding commands:
\THEHOUR
,
\THEMINUTE
,
\THEHOURXII
,
\THETOHOUR
and
\THETOMINUTE
.
For example, to define a new time format that uses a dot instead of a colon:
\newtimeformat{dottime}{\twodigit{\THEHOUR}.\twodigit{\THEMINUTE}}You then need to switch to this new format before you can use it:
\settimeformat{dottime} \currenttime
As from version 2.43, if you only want to change the separator,
you can simply redefine \timeseparator
instead of defining a new time format. For example:
\renewcommand{\timeseparator}{.}The xxivtime format will now work like the dottime format defined above.
\pdfdate
3 prints the date in the format required for
PDF files, e.g. if the date is 1 May 2004 and time is
22:02, \pdfdate
will print 20040501220200. The reason
this date format is separate from all the others is because the
other form doesn't get properly expanded by PDFTeX. (This
command is defined regardless of whether the package option
nodate is called.)
Example:
\pdfinfo{ /Author (Me) /Title (A Sample Document) /CreationDate (D:20040501215500) /ModificationDate (D:\pdfdate) }
There are two commands that print the name of the current
month:
\monthname
prints the current month name in full,
e.g. August, and
\shortmonthname
prints the abbreviated month name,
e.g. Aug. Both \monthname
and
\shortmonthname
take an optional argument (a number from
1 to 12) if the name of a specific month is required. For
example, \monthname[6]
will produced the output: June.
The day of the week is computed using the algorithm documented at http://userpages.wittenburg.edu/bshelburne/Comp150/DayOfWeek.htm. This algorithm works for any date between 1st Jan, 1901 and 31st Dec, 2099. The following macros display the day of week for a given date:
\dayofweekname{
day}{
month}{
year}
prints the
day of week for the specified date. For example,
\dayofweekname{31}{10}{2002}
will produce the output: Thursday.
\shortdayofweekname{
day}{
month}{
year}
prints the abbreviated name for the
day of week for the specified date. For example
\shortdayofweekname{31}{10}{2002}
will produce the output: Thu.
The TeX conditional \ifshowdow
can be used to determine
whether or not the option dayofweek has been passed to
the package.
For example:
\ifshowdow\dayofweekname{31}{10}{2002} \fiwill only display the day of week if the dayofweek option was passed to datetime. Alternatively, you can use David Carlisle's ifthen package:
\ifthenelse{\boolean{showdow}}{\dayofweekname{31}{10}{2002} }{}
The command \ordinaldate{
number}
displays number as a date-type ordinal. If the
current language is English, this will simply pass
the argument to \ordinalnum
(defined in the
fmtcount package),
if the current language is Breton, Welsh or French, a superscript
will only be added if number is 1, otherwise only
number will be displayed.
The macro \formatdate{
day}{
month}{
year}
4 formats
the specified date according to the current format of
\today
5. (Arguments
must all be integers.) For example, in combination with
\longdate
, the command
\formatdate{27}{9}{2004}
will produce the output: Monday 27th
September, 2004.
You can ensure that a number is displayed with at least two
digits by using the command
\twodigit{
num}
6.
This is of use if you want to define your own date or time
formats.
New date formats can be defined using the command:
\newdateformat{
name}{
format}
where name is the name of the new format, and
format is how to format the date. Within the
argument format you can use the commands \THEDAY
,
\THEMONTH
and \THEYEAR
to represent the relevant day, month and
year, or you can use the counters
DAY, MONTH and YEAR if you want to
use \ordinal
etc. Once you have defined the
new date format, you can then switch to it using the declaration \
name
(i.e. the name you specified preceded by a backslash), and
subsequent calls to \today
and \formatdate
will
use your new format.
For example, suppose you want to define a new date format called, say, mydate, that will typeset the date in the form: 8-3-2002, then you can do:
\newdateformat{mydate}{\THEDAY-\THEMONTH-\THEYEAR}
\newdateformat
will then define the declaration
\mydate
which can be used to
switch to your new format. In the following example,
two new date formats are defined, and they are then
selected to produce two different formats for the current date:
\newdateformat{dashdate}{% \twodigit{\THEDAY}-\twodigit{\THEMONTH}-\THEYEAR} \newdateformat{usvardate}{% \monthname[\THEMONTH] \ordinal{DAY}, \THEYEAR} Dash: \dashdate\today. US: \usvardate\today.If the current date is, say, 8th March, 2002, the above code will produce the following: Dash: 08-03-2002. US: March 8th, 2002.
Note that \THEDAY
etc and DAY etc have no real
meaning outside \newdateformat
(this is why they
are in uppercase). Incidentally, the dashdate format
is not really necessary, as you can achieve this format
using:
\renewcommand{\dateseparator}{-} \ddmmyyyydate
Another note: in the above code, \ordinal
was
used to illustrate the use of the DAY counter. It
is better to use \ordinaldate
instead:
\newdateformat{usvardate}{% \monthname[\THEMONTH] \ordinaldate{\THEDAY}, \THEYEAR}
It is possible to save a date for later use using the command: 7
\newdate{
name}{
day}{
month}{
year}
This date can later be displayed using the same format as that
used by \formatdate
using the command:
\displaydate{
name}
Individual elements of the date can be extracted using the commands:
\getdateday{
name}
\getdatemonth{
name}
\getdateyear{
name}
The following commands are defined by the datetime package:
Command Name | Default Value |
---|---|
\dateseparator |
/ |
\timeseparator |
: |
\amname |
am |
\pmname |
pm |
\amorpmname |
\amname if morning, otherwise
\pmname |
\amstring |
in the morning |
\pmstring |
in the afternoon |
\amorpmstring |
\amstring if morning, otherwise
\pmstring |
\halfpast |
Half past |
\quarterpast |
Quarter past |
\quarterto |
Quarter to |
\noon |
Noon |
\midnight |
Midnight |
\oclockstring |
O'Clock |
The following options may be passed to this package:
long | make \today produce long date |
|
short | make \today produce short date |
|
ddmmyyyy | make \today produce DD/MM/YYYY date |
|
dmyyyy | make \today produce D/M/YYYY date |
|
ddmmyy | make \today produce DD/MM/YY date |
|
dmyy | make \today produce D/M/YY date |
|
text | make \today produce text date |
|
us | make \today produce US style date |
|
mmddyyyy | make \today produce MM/DD/YYYY date |
|
mdyyyy | make \today produce M/D/YYYY date |
|
mmddyy | make \today produce MM/DD/YY date |
|
mdyy | make \today produce M/D/YY date |
|
raise | make ordinal st,nd,rd,th appear as superscript | |
level | make ordinal st,nd,rd,th appear level with rest of text | |
dayofweek | make the day of week appear for \longdate ,
\shortdate |
|
or \textdate |
||
nodayofweek | don't display the day of week. | |
24hr | make \currenttime produce xxivtime
format |
|
12hr | make \currenttime produce ampmtime
format |
|
oclock | make \currenttime produce oclock
format |
|
nodate | Don't redefine \today or define the month or
day of week commands |
|
(useful if you only want the time commands or
\pdfdate ) |
The default options are: long, raise, dayofweek and 24hr.
If the babel package is called prior to
datetime, \date
lang
will be the default date format,
where lang is the current language.
The commands \monthname
and \shortmonthname
,
will produce the month name in the current language.
If you want the month name in a specific language, you
can use the command \monthname
lang.
For example, \monthnamefrench[6]
will produce the output:
juin.
There is currently only limited multilingual support for
\dayofweekname
and \shortdayofweekname
(just
English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). You can add support for
other languages by defining the commands
\dayofweeknameid
lang and
\shortdayofweeknameid
lang. Note that these
commands only take one argument which should be
a number from 1 to 7 indicating the day of the week.
You can use the following as templates. Replace
english with the name of your language (as given
by \languagename
) and replace Sunday
etc as appropriate:
\providecommand{\dayofweeknameidenglish}[1]{% \ifcase#1\relax \or Sunday% \or Monday% \or Tuesday% \or Wednesday% \or Thursday% \or Friday% \or Saturday% \fi} \providecommand{\shortdayofweekidnameenglish}[1]{% \ifcase#1\relax \or Sun% \or Mon% \or Tue% \or Wed% \or Thu% \or Fri% \or Sat% \fi}If you want them added to future versions of datetime, please e-mail me the code.
As from Version 2.4, the datetime package will read in settings from the configuration file datetime.cfg, if it exists, which will override the default package options. For example, suppose you prefer a short date without the day of week by default, you will need to create a file called datetime.cfg that contains the line:
\shortdate\showdowfalseThe file datetime.cfg should then go somewhere on the TeX path. Now all you need to do is:
\usepackage{datetime}without having to specify the short and nodayofweek options.
You can also use this file to define and set your own date styles. For example, you could create a configuration file that has the following lines:
\newdateformat{dashdate}{\twodigit{\THEDAY}-\twodigit{\THEMONTH}-\THEYEAR} \dashdateWhenever you use the datetime package, it will now use this format by default.
Version 2.43 and above of the datetime bundle supplies the LaTeX2HTML style file datetime.perl. This file should be placed in a directory searched by LaTeX2HTML. The following limitations apply to the LaTeX2HTML styles:
\usepackage{datetime} \html{\input{datetime.cfg}}This, I agree, is an unpleasant cludge.
\monthname
language are not
implemented.
There is a datetime FAQ available at: http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/packages/faq/
\pdfdate
3}
4\today
5}
6