The LaTeX Package scrdate#

The scrdate package is a spin-off of KOMA-Script and was part of that collection up to version 3.49.2 of scrdate and KOMA-Script. It was separated from KOMA-Script because it tended to be overlooked within the collection and works very well on its own.

Originally, the scrdate package only allowed users to display the name of the current day, with support for multiple languages. It now also offers various functions for determining the day of the week for any given date.

The package is hosted on Codeberg. For more information, see the CTAN catalog entry.

Usage#

The package is loaded as usual using:

\usepackage{scrdate}

No options are currently supported. In particular, you do not need to specify a language, since scrdate automatically uses the active language, as long as it is configured to be compatible with babel.

Commands that Return Values#

The following commands all return a value. This value can be assigned directly to a counter or used within \numexpr…\relax or \inteval{…}. However, if you want to print the result as an Arabic numeral, you must prefix it with \the. The returned value is therefore comparable to what \value{<counter>} returns.

\CenturyPart{<year>}

This command does not return the century name, but rather the digits of the century for <year>. In the year 2026, for example, \CenturyPart{year} would return the value 20. To display this in the document, you could use the following with the engord package:

This document was created in the \engordnumber{\inteval{1+\CenturyPart{year}}} century.

\DecadePart{<year>}

The name of the command \DecadePart is also somewhat misleading, because it does not actually output the decade, but rather the year without the century digits. In the year 2026, \DecadePart{year} would therefore return the value 26. To output this in the document, one would, for example, use the following with the engord package:

This document was created in the year \the\DecadePart{year} of the \engordnumber{\inteval{1+\CenturyPart{year}}} century.

\DayNumber{<year>}{<month>}{<day>}

This command returns the weekday number for a given date. The numbers follow the American numbering system, where 0 = Sunday, 1 = Monday, 2 = Tuesday, 3 = Wednesday, 4 = Thursday, 5 = Friday, and 6 = Saturday. For example,

May 1, 2027 has the weekday number \the\DayNumber{2027}{5}{1}.

would produce the output:

May 1, 2027 has the weekday number 6.

\ISODayNumber{<year>-<month>-<day>}

The only difference in this command is how the date is specified. Instead of providing <year>, <month>, and <day> as separate arguments, the date is specified in ISO format as a single argument. The example above becomes:

May 1, 2027 has the weekday number \the\ISODayNumber{2027-5-1}.

Note: Earlier versions of this guide stated that limited calculations are possible within the arguments. In reality, however, this approach is so unreliable that it should be avoided. If you do need to perform calculations, they should be done after determining the weekday number.

\todaysnumber

This command directly returns the day-of-the-week number for the current date. This is determined using the TeX registers \year, \month, and \day.

Name of a Weekday#

While the previous section explained how to determine the day-of-the-week number for a date, users are generally interested in the name of that day of the week—for example, “Sunday,” “Monday,” “Tuesday,” “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Friday,” or “Saturday.”

\DayNameByNumber{<day-of-the-week number>}

This command outputs the name of the numerically specified day of the week in the current language, for example, “Saturday” for \DayNameByNumber{6}. Of course, the argument can also be the result of a previous determination of the day of the week number. For example, \DayNameByNumber{\ISODayNumber{2027-5-1}} would also output “Saturday”.

\DayName{<year>}{<month>}{<day>}

This command directly outputs the name of the day of the week for a specified date. It is equivalent to \DayNameByNumber{\DayNumber{<year>}{<month>}{<day>}}, but is much shorter and therefore easier to write.

\ISODayName{<year>-<month>-<day>}

This command differs from \DayName in the same way that \DayNumber differs from \ISODayNumber.

Today#

In the section “Commands that return values”, we already introduced \todaysnumber, a command that refers to the current date and returns the corresponding weekday number. There are several other commands that also refer to the current date, as represented by the TeX registers \year, \month, and \day.

\IsoToday

Returns the current date in ISO format. The month and day can be one or two digits long. For example, on May 1, 2027, the output would be “2027-5-1”.

\ISOToday

Returns the current date in ISO format, with the month and day padded with leading zeros to two digits if necessary. For example, on May 1, 2027, “2027-05-01” would be returned.

\todaysname

Returns the day of the week in the current language. In English, for example, “Saturday” would be returned on May 1, 2027.

\nameday{<Name>}

Just as you can use \date{<Date>} to set the output of \today to a specific date (or even a fictional value), you can use \nameday{<Name>} to pin the output of \todaysname to a specific value. This does not check whether <Name> is actually a valid day of the week. For example, you could use \nameday{Wochentag} to force the output to be “Wochentag”.

Language Support#

By default, scrdate supports the following languages (the corresponding babel options are listed in parentheses): Croatian (croatian), Czech (czech), Danish (danish), Dutch (dutch), English (american, australian, british, canadian, english, UKenglish, USenglish), Finnish (finnish), French (french¹), German (austrian, german, naustrian, ngerman, nswissgerman, swissgerman), Italian (italien), Norwegian (norsk), Polish (polish), Slovak (slovak), Spanish (spanish), Swedish (swedish).

\newdaylanguage{<language>}{<Monday>}{<Tuesday>}{<Wednesday>}{<Thursday>}{<Friday>}{<Saturday>}{<Sunday>}

This command is used to define a new language. The first argument is the language, as used by the babel package. The remaining arguments define the names of the seven days of the week.

Notes:#

• Currently, it doesn’t matter whether a language package such as babel is loaded before or after scrdate.
• If you make a previously unsupported language available for your document using \newdaylanguage, please use the Issue Tracker to submit a feature request. Simply enter “New Language Support: ” as the title and include your \newdaylanguage directive in the text. That’s all that’s required. Typically, the next version of scrdate will then offer your language contribution as a default support to all users.

Tagging#

I don’t think anything in scrdate needs to be tagged. Therefore, I consider the package to be completely uncritical in terms of tagging. If anyone disagrees, please feel free to open an Issue.