Arbitrary date with polyglossia for localisation formatting

Question

I want to be able to define a variable of an arbitrary date and print it in different languages. And since polyglossia automatically formats the \today date, I am sure this can be achieved with it.

I checked

• How to write a non-today date in latex with localization formatting?
• Insert arbitrary date

which both use either datetime2 (which supersedes datetime) or isodate packages. I am not keen to load these packages - particularly since datetime2 interferes with polyglossia and downloads a sub-package for every language used.

True, I can manually change the \day, \month and \year variables so for example

\day=5
\month=2
\year=2017
\today

redefines \today and prints yesterday's date. But in this way, the real today's date is lost.

So, Is there a way to define an arbitrary date with polyglossia for localisation formatting and what would be the correct syntax for this variable?

Answer 1

You can set the registers in a group.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{polyglossia}

\setmainfont{EB Garamond}
\setmainlanguage{french}
\setotherlanguage{russian}

\newcommand{\printdate}[3]{% {<year>}{<month>}{<day>}
  \begingroup
  \year=#1\relax
  \month=#2\relax
  \day=#3\relax
  \today
  \endgroup
}

\begin{document}

Aujourd'hui: \today

Il y a quelque temps: \printdate{1969}{7}{11}

Aujourd'hui: \today

\begin{otherlanguage*}{russian}
Cегодня: \today

некоторое время назад: \printdate{1969}{7}{11}

Cегодня: \today
\end{otherlanguage*}

\end{document}