On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:
>
> >David Brodbeck writes:
> >>TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers. If you're
> >>writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.
> >
> >Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to
> >pick up a
> >bottle of milk.
>
> Depends on your perspective, I guess. It just feels like by the time
> I get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have
> written the whole letter in OO. Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not
> So Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document
> class I'd use. They're all going to be a bit clumsy and
> inappropriate. It's not an "article", it's not a "report", and it's
> certainly not a "book"...
>

Here's my personal letter template. I copy it to the correct file name,
edit it, then latex it. The letter text itself is just plain text.

Doug.

---


\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
%preamble here
\begin{document}
% no page number on this first page
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{flushleft}
Douglas A. Tutty\\
xxx xxxxxxxxx, RR. x\\
xxxxxx, ON xxx xxx\\
Ph: (xxx) xxx--xxxx\\
Email: dtutty@porchlight.ca\\
\end{flushleft}

\noindent \today

\bigskip

\noindent Dear:

\bigskip


\begin{flushleft}
Yours truly,

\vspace{2cm}

Douglas A. Tutty.
\end{flushleft}

\end{document}


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On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
<dtutty@porchlight.ca> said:

> Here's my personal letter template. I copy it to the correct file
> name, edit it, then latex it. The letter text itself is just plain
> text.


> \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
> %preamble here
> \begin{document}
> % no page number on this first page
> \thispagestyle{empty} \begin{flushleft} Douglas A. Tutty\\ xxx
> xxxxxxxxx, RR. x\\ xxxxxx, ON xxx xxx\\ Ph: (xxx) xxx--xxxx\\ Email:
> dtutty@porchlight.ca\\ \end{flushleft}

> \noindent \today

> \bigskip

> \noindent Dear:

> \bigskip

> \begin{flushleft} Yours truly,

> \vspace{2cm}

> Douglas A. Tutty. \end{flushleft}

> \end{document}

--8<---------------cut here------------letter_template------------->8---

\documentclass[12pt]{letter}
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
\usepackage{times}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage[margin=1in, head=0.25in, headsep=0.25in, nofoot]{geometry}
\setlength{\topmargin}{0pt}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0pt}
\setlength{\headheight}{0pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{0pt}
\setlength{\footskip}{5pt}
\setlength{\textheight}{9.0in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}

\address{Manoj Srivastava\\
229 Brandon Lane\\
Woodbury, TN 37190}

\signature{Manoj Srivastava}


\makelabels{}

\begin{document}

\letter{Some one\\
P.O. Box 2210\\
Sometown USA, 00000-0000}

\opening{Dear Sir}

Blah Blah blah.

\closing{Yours Sincerely,}
\ps{post scriptum}
\encl{some thing or the other}

\end{document}

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

--8<---------------cut here-----envelope----start------------->8---

% TeX Template for an envelope
%
% To use:
%
% Copy into a new file, replace all
% [BRACKETED UPPER-CASE TEXT]
% with your own, then run the tex command on it.
% Use dvips to print the .dvi output in landscape mode:
% dvips -t landscape envelope.dvi

\font\cmssa = cmss12
\font\cmssc = cmss14
%\special{papersize=9.5in,3.25in}
%\special{landscape}
\parindent 0 pt\nopagenumbers\parskip 10 pt
\hsize 9.5 in\vsize 3.25 in
\voffset 1.25 in
\cmssa

Manoj Srivastava

229 Brandon Lane

Woodbury, TM 37190

\vskip .5 in\vskip 15 pt\parindent 3.5 in
\font\addressrm=cmss16 scaled\magstep2
\addressrm

document

P.O. Box 2210

Sometown USA, 00000-0000

\end

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

manoj
--
APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; ...and is
best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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On Sep 26, 2007, at 11:31 PM, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
> <dtutty@porchlight.ca> said:
>
>> Here's my personal letter template. ...
> --8<---------------cut here------------letter_template-------------
> >8---

Thanks, those give me a nice starting point.

LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic
skills. It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts
so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins. I no longer long
for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point
Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed
strips.


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On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:51:04AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
>LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic
>skills. It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts
>so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins. I no longer long
>for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point
>Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed
>strips.

When I was reviewing my first large LaTeX doc my coworker thought I was
reading a vendor supplied white paper. He was so impressed with the
quality of the type-setting he asked me to tech him how to use it.

--
Neil Watson | Debian Linux
System Administrator | Uptime 13 days
http://watson-wilson.ca


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On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:51:04AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2007, at 11:31 PM, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
> ><dtutty@porchlight.ca> said:
> >
> >>Here's my personal letter template. ...
>
> Thanks, those give me a nice starting point.
>
> LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic
> skills. It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts
> so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins. I no longer long
> for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point
> Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed
> strips.

Guess what. My only printer is an IBM Personal Computer Graphics
Printer (like the one pictured in the original marketing material for
the origional PC). Its a 9-pin dot-matrix, tractor fed. I run latex
and then either get nicely formatted plain-text, or via apsfilter and
gs-gpl, I get nice fonts and everything.

I still have to tear off the feed strip, it takes 17 minutes per page,
and the ribbon-feed is broken so I have to sit and twiddle the ribbon
knob...



Doug.


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On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 01:31:57AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
> <dtutty@porchlight.ca> said:
>
> > Here's my personal letter template. I copy it to the correct file
> > name, edit it, then latex it. The letter text itself is just plain
> > text.
>
>
> > \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
> > %preamble here
> > \begin{document}
> > % no page number on this first page
> > \thispagestyle{empty} \begin{flushleft} Douglas A. Tutty\\ xxx
> > xxxxxxxxx, RR. x\\ xxxxxx, ON xxx xxx\\ Ph: (xxx) xxx--xxxx\\ Email:
> > dtutty@porchlight.ca\\ \end{flushleft}
>
> > \noindent \today
>
> > \bigskip
[...]
>
> --8<---------------cut here------------letter_template------------->8---
>
> \documentclass[12pt]{letter}
> \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
> \usepackage{times}
> \pagestyle{empty}
> \usepackage[margin=1in, head=0.25in, headsep=0.25in, nofoot]{geometry}
> \setlength{\topmargin}{0pt}
> \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0pt}
> \setlength{\headheight}{0pt}
> \setlength{\headsep}{0pt}
> \setlength{\footskip}{5pt}
> \setlength{\textheight}{9.0in}
> \setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}
>
> \address{Manoj Srivastava\\
> 229 Brandon Lane\\
> Woodbury, TN 37190}
[...]

Thanks, guys. I have been doing the same sort of thing -- in more
complex templates -- for some years. I've always felt it was a bit
clumsy to finish up with all these files cluttering up my nice clean
directories. So now you have spurred me into writing a script to take
a given letter -- just the bit from the address to the end of the
content -- and add the template letterhead, the date, and the closing,
put the heading in bold, then latex, dvips, save a tagline on the
original body file to say which template was used, what date, and what
style of closing, clean up the intermediate files and make tea.

Well, I nearly did it too, but I couldn't persuade bash to stop
stripping out backslashes, so I've started again in perl. Nearly there
now. So thanks for the stimulation. I've been putting this off for
years. Now I'll be able to write letters mostly in plain text. :-)

But it doesn't yet make tea...
--
richard


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