Actually I think I misspoke and miscalculated the Days, because it just happened to be in the middle of the season when I checked the code, so when I thought it was giving me the number of days of spring, on this link and compared it to the code, it was actually giving me the number of days REMAINING. So, that being said, the day of spring is not off, but rather those number of days remaining. For instance we show that there are 93 days in spring, not technically, but according to any calendar the way it records it. So, I am not sure how to deal with this if we have to round something or do something in the code to adjust for this. And to your point of starting on the day as Zero, no we actually start as day one, but I think the above explanation explains why I was not explaining what I saw correctly. Hope this clears it up and and makes it more clear as to how we can adjust the code in order make this more inline with any store bought calendar.

Thanks again, and as usual I am starting to really appreciate the code, and have already been feeding it past dates to check on what we call Chrono Labeling records for past dates. Because I can put in any date and it works great!

Thank you as always,

Brian!

For some reason i am having difficulty copying all the code over correctly, so the email worked, somewhat - will explain, but the code above does not, and i am still getting it a day off, even from the email. For instance today when i put in the date to run the template, i get the following results but according to my calculations its actually the 47th day of spring and 45 days until Summer. and this seems to be the same on websites or even apps you download. they all give me the same results. or some just run a clock and you can round it to the nearest day, but i am not sure how to do this in the wolfram language, to get it accurate to at least the day, not necessarily the minute or hour, just the day.

CreateTemplate[{2017, 5, 6}]

Again, is there anyway you can copy all the code in here so more people can help with it because for some reason i am having difficulty getting all the code copied over. IT's hard to believe this template has been so difficult to create, when someone can download an app today and get all the data, i wounder how they are figuring it, and i would suggest that Wolfram include a season function eventually to make things like this easier. I do truly appreciate everyone's help with this, i never would have guessed that of all things i am tying to do this one would prove to be one of more difficult tasks for us. In fact i have even had trouble making the template a larger size, with an included boarder around the whole thing without other portions being distorted. I do not suppose there is a way to use the manipulate function, or what function could you use, in order to use a slide bar to make the template larger or smaller depending upon what I am using it for. Is that even possible?

In fact eventually during what we call our "Seasonal Migration Cycles" that is the period of time when the season begins but before the next Quarter. we would like the dark background to switch from the Date "Saturday, May 6th, 2017" to the section that will read "Summer 01/??", until which time we enter into the 3rd quarter on the first day of July. and then it would revert back to the same format as before. I just did not want to bring this up at first because its not as necessary, and i though it would confuse the issue, but now that we have gotten this far, i think i will just at least through this out there.

Again I am not sure why the code is not working here, but it dose from my email, so if the whole of the code could be shared that would be great. And maybe eventually with more people chiming in we will eventually accomplish this task, its only been two years attempting it, so i guess i can be patient :)

Thank again for everyone's help.

Brian: I did not think the partial solution was neing used. I had continued some work on your question, did not post. Currently don't have access to that code. When I find it I will post from where I stopped work.

But I had same or similar questions as Sander. And the seasons cross years. Depends on where on Earth so to work every where your code would need location if not accessible then set a default location.

If I execute my code in 11.1 it executes without any errors, make sure you have a fresh kernel without old definitions still in memory or such...

How do you define the seasons? there are multiple definitions in the world, and some that even change per year... without a definition it is gonna be hard...

This is great! Thank you both Sander and Brain and to whomever else joins in the assistance with creating this template. I did not expect so much help but only maybe some direction, but this is great! Actually I was already answering Sander by the time Brian had written in but had posted it many hours later before I had a chance to look at yours Brian, the formatting and placement looks great. I'll have to look at the code more closely, and because I am so new it will take me a while, but I like the different approaches so i can better learn this language. Have not yet looked at it in detail but in both cases I am at least getting a better idea. And if anyone else wants to improve upon this even more, it will be welcomed :).

Thanks so much for the community's help on this!

So, currently every day I figure out the numbers by looking at my calendar and adding or subtracting by hand, and only continue to do this because it's become the way I have always done it up to this point. Obviously even if I just have Mathematica give me the numbers each day it would be easier than doing it all myself, and I could even put it myself in a template, but I like the direction that the those who have answered are taking. To keep us on track with what the numbers should be, as of today, I updated what it should read for TODAY (noticing the first image I think was off a bit) figuring it out myself, and I know even using Wolfram Alpha probably would be easier then counting but like I said, you know how you get into the habit of things :(.

Anyway, TODAY's template I think should read the following numbers and also this time included a line through what would be nice but not necessary and what I think my be difficult because of my unique way of calculating this as a "week", but all the other numbers should be exact and easy to calculate each and every day updated, automatically.

Brian:

I don't have much time to give a proper solution; so as time is ticking I will put what I have so far.

SetSystemOptions["DataOptions" -> "ReturnQuantities" -> False];

ISOWeek[x_] := 
  Module[{d2}, 
   d2 = DateList[{ToExpression[
       DateString[
        DatePlus[
         x, {(-(Flatten[
                Position[{"Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", 
                  "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"}, 
                 DateString[DatePlus[x, {-1, "Day"}], {"DayName"}], 
                 1]])[[1]] + 4), "Day"}], "Year"]], 1, 3, 0, 0, 0}]; 
   IntegerPart[(DateDifference[d2, x] + 
       Flatten[Position[{"Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", 
           "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"}, 
          DateString[d2, {"DayName"}], 1]][[1]] + 5)/7]];

ISODay = Function[{date}, 
   Flatten[Position[{"Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat"},
       DateString[date, {"DayNameShort"}], 1]][[1]]];

Grid[{
  {
   Item[Style[
     DateString[DateList[], {"Year", "", "Month", "", "Day"}], 
     FontFamily -> "Arial Black", FontWeight -> "Black", 
     FontSize -> 32], Alignment -> Center],
   Item[Style[
     StringJoin[
      ToString[
       IntegerPart[DateDifference[{First[DateList[]]}, DateList[]]]], 
      " / ", ToString[IntegerPart[
            DateDifference[ DateList[], {Plus[First[DateList[]], 1]}]]]],
      FontSize -> 28, FontFamily -> "Arial", FontWeight -> Bold], 
    Alignment -> Center],
   Item[Style[
     Row[{Style[StringJoin["WK", ToString[ISOWeek[DateList[]]]], Red],
        Style[StringJoin["-", 
         ToString[
          NumberForm[ISODay[DateList[]], 
           NumberPadding -> {"0", ""}]]], Black]}], FontSize -> 30, 
     FontFamily -> "Arial Black", FontWeight -> Bold], 
    Alignment -> Center]
   },
  {
   Item[Style[
     DateString[
      DateList[], {"DayName", ", ", "MonthName", " ", "Day", "th, ", 
       "Year"}], FontSize -> 40, FontFamily -> "Calibri", 
     FontWeight -> Bold, FontColor -> White, Background -> Black], 
    Alignment -> Center, Background -> Black], SpanFromLeft, 
   SpanFromLeft
   }, {
   Row[
    {
     Item[
      Style["Spring 30/63 (2nd)", FontSize -> 24, 
       FontFamily -> "Arial", FontWeight -> Bold], 
      Alignment -> Center], Spacer[50], 
     Item[Style[
       StringJoin[DateString[DateList[], "Quarter"], "nd", 
        " Quarter ", "18/73 (3rd)"], FontSize -> 24, 
       FontFamily -> "Arial", FontWeight -> Bold], Alignment -> Center]
     }, Alignment -> Center , Frame -> False
     ], SpanFromLeft, SpanFromLeft}
  },
  Frame -> True, FrameStyle -> Thickness[5], Spacings -> {2, 5}]

Which would give

The Seasons, Quarters, and dividers need more work. I had a version with Overlay[Grid[]...]. But that was unstable interns of screen resizing. There used to be a package that calculated Seasons

see Scientific Astronomer http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Conferences/372/ I attempted to get as close to your original fonts. It would be easier to explicitly state them. My font matching skills are rusty. I'll come back to this later.

Thank you, Sander Huisman! Now just to let you know, I am new to the Wolfram Language and I am currently reading; “An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language.” I am extremely impressed with the speed of this community to produce the code requested. Using the code you have provided, I get the following output…

As you can see, the output is different from what you have displayed in you last message. Is there a way to convert it to what you show or am I doing something wrong? Again, I apologize that I’m so green at this! The members in this community have been outstanding with respect to the four questions I have asked to date.

It’s going to be a learning curve for me and my friends as we now try to move our ideas to the Wolfram Cloud while we slowly create each of the solutions we need using the Wolfram Language.

This template is just one of many components of a greater project that I have been working on for over two decades. When I see the code you have written, I am better able to deconstruct it as I learn the language and apply it to other parts of our ongoing project. This question, as it relates to a template for our white board, will move us more towards Wolfram technologies and away from products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

These are probably simple problems for many in this community. I have read some of the impressive profiles of members but for those of us working on our own projects with little background in the Wolfram Language it seems a bit daunting, but we are in this for the long haul!

Thank you,

Brian

Hi Brian,

Pretty much all the pieces of text can be generated using DateString. For the remaining dates of the year/quarter I suggest you use DateDifference. You can use a Grid construct to format it like you have above. It can contain anything and you can set the background to White/Black as you have, also you can merge the cells using SpanFromLeft. You can use Style to style the various colors. If I have some more time, I can give it a try.

--SH