Trying to create a PHP template in NetBeans 6.9.1 for a Copyright of the current year using 

Copyright ${date?string("yyyy")}

or 
<#setting short="yyyy">
Copyright ${date?string.short}

Both return an error:
Expected method. date?string evaluated instead to freemarker.template.SimpleScalar 

From Daniel Dekany with FreeMarker

The problem is most certainly that that the value of the "date"
variable is not a java.util.Date (or a TemplateDateModel), but a
string. That's the mistake of NetBeans... they should use a
java.util.Date for a date, not a java.lang.String. Anyway, since it's
a string, you can get a sub-string of it to extract the year, like
${date[0..3]}. (Or, you can cast it to date and then back to string
with ${date?date('someFormatPattern')?string('yyyy')} where
someFormatPattern is whatever format NetBean uses for that variable.)