How to get the datetime2 package to display dates in South African format: "1 April 2018"

Question

By default Latex formats the date as mmm d, yyyy, i.e. in the nonsensical middle endian format.
I would like to display it as d Mmm yyyy, e.g. 1 April 2018.

I've gone through the datetime2 documentation, but there is no dmmmyyyy option. I also have no luck using the babel package, because these is no english-za localization.

I would really like to avoid having to use the babel package, I have enough packages as is and I do not like the manipulations babel performs to the .aux file.

The following code illustrates the issue:

\documentclass[a4paper,english]{report}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
%I'd really like to just specify:
%\usepackage[d\space\Mmm\space\yyyy]{datetime2}
%So I can drop the day or rearrange things as needed
\usepackage[useregional]{datetime2}

%opening
\title{Test} 
\author{Johan}

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
\end{document}

Is https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/405942/36296 what you are looking for? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Jun 27 '18 at 15:33
Yes, that works, except that XeLatex now recompiles my project 5 times :-< — Johan, Jun 27 '18 at 15:45

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 27 '18 at 17:59

The regionless english style defaults to the US style (to match the default \today provided by the LaTeX kernel). The datetime2-english module comes with a number of predefined English-speaking locales. It currently doesn't include South African, but the en-MT (Malta) locale matches your required format:

\documentclass[a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[en-MT]{datetime2}

\title{Test}
\author{Johan}

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
\end{document}

You can also obtain them same result with some of the other locales. For example:

\documentclass[a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[en-GB]{datetime2}

\DTMlangsetup[en-GB]{ord=omit}

\title{Test}
\author{Johan}

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
\end{document}

Johan · Answer 2 · 2018-06-27T16:04:50.140

The following fixes the issue:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[en-GB]{datetime2}

\let\oldtoday\today
\newcommand{\longtoday}{{\DTMlangsetup[en-GB]{abbr=false,ord=omit}\oldtoday}}
\newcommand{\shorttoday}{{\DTMlangsetup[en-GB]{abbr,ord=omit}\oldtoday}}
\renewcommand{\today}{{\longtoday}}

\title{test}

\begin{document}

\maketitle
%\longtoday

%\shorttoday

\end{document}

A simple alternative that does not use any packages (see: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/112949/136037) is:

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand{\today}{\ifnum\number\day<10 0\fi \number\day \space%
  \ifcase \month \or January\or February\or March\or April\or May%
  \or June\or July\or August\or September\or October\or November\or December\fi \space%
  \number \year} 
\begin{document}
  \today
\end{document}

Rather than saving \oldtoday you could just use \DTMtoday instead (which is datetime2's actual definition of \today provided in case another package changes \today after datetime2). — Nicola Talbot, Jun 28 '18 at 10:04

How to get the datetime2 package to display dates in South African format: "1 April 2018"

2 Answers2