Re: date handling maltreated?

[Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@gmail.com>]

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Am 20.03.2013 um 16:40 schrieb H. van der Meer <H.vanderMeer@uva.nl>:

> Trying to do some date and time processing myself, I ran into problems caused by ConTeXt makeing it incompatibel with the original plain TeX itself!
> 
> In the TeX-book, Appendix B one finds
> <citation>
> (Some parameters are set by TeX itself as it runs, so it is inappropriate to initialize them: \time, \day, \month, and year are established at the beginning of a job; ..
> </citation>
> 
> Now the results in ConTeXT with a minimal example, put into the log for easier copying into the mail:
> \starttext
> \writestatus{}{\meaning\date -> \date}
> \writestatus{}{\meaning\day -> \the\day}
> \writestatus{}{\meaning\month -> \month WHY NOT monthname?}
> \writestatus{}{\meaning\year -> \the\year}
> \writestatus{}{\meaning\time -> \the\time}
> \stoptext
> 
> Result:
> > \protected macro:->\dodoubleempty \syst_converters_date -> \date 
> > \day-> 20
> > macro:#1->\ctxcommand {monthname(#1)}-> \labeltext {unknown}HY NOT monthname?
> > \year-> 2013
> > \time-> 989
> 
> Plain TeX here gives:
> \message{\meaning\day -> \the\day}
> \message{\meaning\month -> \the\month}
> \message{\meaning\year -> \the\year}
> \message{\meaning\time -> \the\time}
> \end
> 
> Result:
> (./plaindates.tex \day-> 20 \month-> 3 \year-> 2013 \time-> 991 )
> 
> I strongly ask that ConTeXt abstains from changing the definition of \month and reverts to the exact result as given by plain TeX, i.e. a number in the range [1-12]. Because the change in ConTeXt makes it impossible to do calculations on the month.
> 
> Furthermore I encountered problems with defining expanded macros for currentdate and currenttime. This seems impossible to accomplish, at least in a simple manner. See the results from these to examples:
> \edef\thedate{\currentdate}\writestatus{}{\meaning\thedate -> \thedate}
> \edef\thetime{\currenttime}\writestatus{}{\meaning\thetime -> \thetime}
> giving:
> > macro:->\currentdate -> \currentdate 
> > macro:->\currenttime -> \currenttime 
> 
> This is most unhappy, because one really should be able to put the expansions of these macros somewhere.
> I hope the next beta will have solutions for these problems.

TeX primitives are available under \normal…

Wolfgang


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