I would like to add a custom copyright footer to my site e.g. MONTH YEAR. I have set up a »short« date format for English, French and German in admin/config/regional/date-time/locale. Using <?php print format_date(time(), 'custom', t('F Y')); ?> in page.tpl.php is working great.
However I would love to go one step further. How do I print the short date format to page.tpl.php instead of adding them to *.tpl files separately?
You are right using the correct API format_date(). What you need to do is passing correct value to it.
<?php print format_date(time(), 'short'); ?>
According to the API doc, the function signature is:
format_date($timestamp, $type = 'medium', $format = '', $timezone = NULL, $langcode = NULL)
And it explained how you should handle the translation.
$langcode: (optional) Language code to translate to. Defaults to the language used to display the page.
$langcode is handled automatically if you keep it as default value.
<?php print format_date(time(), 'short'); ?>, is it what you want?