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. Hans van der Meer