>> I have consulted the manuals and even the source (core-con.tex) but I 
>> cannot find a way of getting a three-letter month using the \date 
command.
>> For example, I would like to display today's date as 23-Apr-08.  This 
>> gives a short display suitable for use in a margin, but avoids the 
>> confusion of American (04-23-08) vs English (23-04-08) ordering when 
using 
>> numbers.
>> Can anyone help?
>
>These are available (sort of)
>
>   \currentdate[day,--,{\monthshort\normalmonth},--,year] % lowercase
>
>or
>
>   \currentdate[day,--,{\MONTHSHORT\normalmonth},--,year] % uppercase
>

Thanks, Taco, that does the job for now. 
Now all we need is something called \Monthshort which puts the 
first letter in uppercase (Jan, Feb etc)!!!

Thanks,

Richard