Textcalendar

Textcalendar refers to a class or utility that generates calendars in plain, text form for display in terminals, text files, or other fixed-width environments. It is most prominently represented in programming libraries as a TextCalendar class within a calendar module, notably in Python, where it renders month and year calendars as simple, monospaced strings rather than graphical layouts. The concept is widely used in various languages and tools that need a lightweight, human-readable calendar without graphical components.

In its typical implementation, TextCalendar focuses on producing well-formatted textual output rather than handling complex date logic or event data. Key features usually include support for choosing the starting day of the week (for example, Monday or Sunday), methods to generate a single month or an entire year as strings, and a facility to print directly to standard output. The output is designed for fixed-width fonts and environments where a clean, columnar layout is desirable.

In Python, the TextCalendar class can be configured with a firstweekday parameter and provides methods such as formatmonth(year, month, w=2, l=0) and formatyear(year, width=3, spacing=6). There are also utilities like formatweekheader() to render the weekday header. Typical usage involves creating an instance and calling these methods to obtain strings that can be displayed or written to files.

Applications include console applications, reports, and simple tooling that require a readable, non-graphical calendar. While useful for text-based output, text calendars are not a substitute for full calendar libraries that manage events, locales, or advanced formatting. See also: calendar module, command-line calendar tools.