[NTG-context] Re: \time pendant to \currenttime

11 Jun 2025

      Hi Hans,

Thanks for the follow-up! 

I'm not sure about what the easiest approach would be, but one of the strengths of ConTeXt is certainly the ability to "automatically" convert the same input into different representations in the output depending on setups rather than changing the document source.

So, ideally "time" would allow this similar to "date" to convert "16:40" into "16:40 Uhr" or "4:40 pm" or similar. (Maybe allowing to adjust durations as well.) The date command is quite sophisticated, I agree.

Whether formatting is handled more easily on the lua end or not, I can't really gauge. There is in fact a great number of formatting keys available that might be easy to parse in the context interface. So, maybe all that is needed is an optional secondary argument "format="? I could come up with:

\startluacode

	userdata = userdata or {}

	function userdata.mytime(str, fmt)

		local datetable = {}

		for key, value in str:gmatch("(%w+)%s*=%s*(%d+)") do
			datetable[key] = tonumber(value)
		end

		context.type(os.date("%X", os.time(datetable)))

	end

\stopluacode

\def\mytime#1#2{\ctxlua{userdata.mytime([==[#1]==], [==[#2]==])}}

\mytime{year=1970, month=1, day=1, hour=0, sec=1}{}

However, I don't know how to convert/handle the different escape characters ("%") required for the format string.

Just an idea. :-)

Thank you — I'll also try the files you shared soon!

Ben
...
On Jun 10, 2025, at 17:27, Hans Hagen  wrote:
On 6/10/2025 6:54 PM, Benjamin Buchmuller wrote:
...
Hi Hans,
Thanks for sharing this so quickly!
I should probably wikify how to get these files compile: I first placed it in "tex/texmf-local" and ran "context --make" and "mtxrun --generate" didn't seem to do the trick for me. I also tried the same after placing the file in "tex/context/modules/mkxl" (where the "crappyspec" module resides), but although I get the "temp-new" module to load, I still get complaints about "missing number, treated as zero". Maybe the primitive is not correctly overloaded? Or (more likely) I'm not doing it right to get the mkxl file being executed. :-)
Regarding the formatting, maybe this could be constructed similarly to
 \date[d=25,m=4,y=2008][weekday,month,day,{,~},year]
one could specify similarly to other parsers where "m" is reserved for "month" etc (obviously we could overload as they are associated with \date[] and not with \time[]).
But is that really needed used? Maybe overkill.
...
H= % hours as decimal number (0–24)
I=  % hours as decimal number (0–12) [not sure if needed]
M= % minute as decimal number (0–59)
S= % Seconds as decimal number (0–61)
p % (optional) AM/PM indicator in the locale; used in conjunction with I and not with H
u % (optional) unit for durations
For time there's always the lua one (we could pass that one)
...
so
\time[H=16,M=32][hour,{:},minute]
% 16:32
\time[H=16,M=32][hour,{:},minute,{ },indicator]
% 4:32 pm
let's go step by step ...
...
and one could "hijack" the command for durations as well (with some overloading similar to "m", "MONTH", "mm", "month" etc.)
\time[M=3,S=30,u=minute][MM,{:},SS,{ },unit]
% 04:32 min
(Unit would take abbreviation from the units module, ideally.)
Then
\setuplangauge[en][time={HH, :, MM, :, p}]
Just a couple of thoughts though. Thank you for all your help!
That is something to coordinate with Tomas Hala, as he has students from all over the world who provide language specific info. SOmethign we can discuss at the meeting.
Hans
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