\the\year in Roman and \the\month in text

Question

I would like to get the month in text e.g., June and the year in Roman, e.g. MMXIV when I call \the\month and \the\year

I also would like to avoid using any external package (I found some related questions, but all seem to be based on the datetime package):

\today month as text

Month Name in Upper case

How do I "unprotect" an argument?

Change \the\year

I assume you're up for a macro pair like \MONTH and \YEAR that does that? — Werner, Jun 18 '14 at 23:57
@Werner Well, I don't know if a new macro or to \renew \year and \month — Mario S. E., Jun 19 '14 at 00:01
Well, see if my answer provides you with hope... :) If not, I'll delete it. — Werner, Jun 19 '14 at 00:05
I'm asking why you don't want to use a package; just for reinventing the wheel? ;-) — egreg, Jun 19 '14 at 10:17
@egreg, maybe because I feel there is no need for a whole package for something that looks so simple? Perhaps I'm mistaken here... — Mario S. E., Jun 19 '14 at 10:28
@egreg Could you please write an answer using a package, then? :) — Mario S. E., Jun 19 '14 at 10:43

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '14 at 00:05

13

The following minimal example defines \MONTH and \YEAR that provides the output you're after:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\MONTH}{%
  \ifcase\the\month
  \or January% 1
  \or February% 2
  \or March% 3
  \or April% 4
  \or May% 5
  \or June% 6
  \or July% 7
  \or August% 8
  \or September% 9
  \or October% 10
  \or November% 11
  \or December% 12
  \fi}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\YEAR}{\@Roman{\the\year}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

Month: \the\month, \MONTH \par
Year: \the\year, \YEAR

\end{document}

answered Jun 19 '14 at 00:05

Werner

603,163

Smooth :D. Is \month always provided in numeric format? Why is so? – Mario S. E. Jun 19 '14 at 00:10
@MarioS.E.: Yes. See section 33.5 Time in TeX by Topic. – Werner Jun 19 '14 at 00:12

egreg · Answer 2 · 2014-06-19T12:33:00.567

12

I don't see why reinventing the wheel. ;-)

The datetime package supports several languages and, if one is not supported, the package author will surely be glad to add it. Perhaps also an interface for printing the year in Roman numerals would be useful in the package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[italian,english]{babel}
\usepackage{datetime}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\Romanyear{\@Roman{\year}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\monthname, \Romanyear

\selectlanguage{italian}

\monthname, \Romanyear

\end{document}

enter image description here

edited Jun 19 '14 at 12:33

answered Jun 19 '14 at 11:01

egreg

1,121,712

I just remember why I didn't try this one: what I have is a \gdef\@thesisdate{\the\month \the\year} in my .sty file. If I use @Werner's solution, I'd have: \gdef\@thesisdate{\MONTH \the\year}, which works just fine for both the pdf document and the hyperref pdf setup later. If I go like your answer, I get a warning saying that \monthname is not a valid token – Mario S. E. Jun 19 '14 at 11:18
Naturally, the \newcommand{\Romanyear}{...} works perfectly :) – Mario S. E. Jun 19 '14 at 11:19
3

\@Roman{\number\year} can be simplified to \@Roman{\year}, because \year is already a "TeX number". – Heiko Oberdiek Jun 19 '14 at 11:47
@HeikoOberdiek I'll never remember that \@Roman and the similar commands already do \number or \romannumeral. Thanks. – egreg Jun 19 '14 at 12:32

\the\year in Roman and \the\month in text

2 Answers2