Chinese Zodiacs

[CampanIgnis]

The Chinese zodiacs are mostly based on animals and used in various Asian countries, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac. I know these are a lot but some of them are already implemented.

• Rat (via Mouse implemented but an additional alias might be useful),
• Ox/Cow,
• Tiger,
• Rabbit,
• (East Asian) Dragon,
• Snake,
• Horse,
• Goat,
• Monkey,
• Rooster,
• Dog,
• Pig (already implemented),
• Amabie (アマビエ), not a zodiac but an appropriate addition related SARS-CoV-2 and used along these animals, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amabie and https://www.ac-illust.com/main/detail.php?id=22114392&word=トラさんアマビエの年賀状%E3%80%80挨拶文入り _

Some of these animals are classical choices for favorite pets and hence are interesting outside the zodiac realm.

Additions once the animals are implemented:

• \thisChineseZodiac[options] which like \today selects the current animal at compile time,
• \chineseZodiac[options]{date} which selects the animal of the date, where date might be a date or a year, e.g. \chineseZodiac[options]{2020} equals \mouse[options],
• \thisYearsChineseZodiac[options] which selects the animal of the current year, and
• \nextYearsChineseZodiac[options] which selects the animal of the next year.

The options are passed to the animal, e.g. \mouse[options]. The commands focussing on years are simpler to implement and possibly more important. The command \nextYearsChineseZodiac[options] is useful for new years greetings cards.

If you are able to add one animal by year starting with Ox this year, you might also implement \thisYearsChineseZodiac[options] and \nextYearsChineseZodiac[options] as the existing animals would be sufficient to execute these commands.

Thank you for your work and your time.

[samcarter]

@CampanIgnis Thanks a lot for all these suggestions! That's definitely a good idea! I'll keep this list in mind when adding new TikZlings, but implementation might take some time.