generator-latex-mail
v0.0.1
Published
A yeoman template for scaffolding LaTeX administrative mails (in french format)
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Maintainers
ccamelReadme
generator-latex-mail
A Yeoman template for scaffolding LaTeX administrative mails (in french format)
Features
- Scaffolds a workspace where all latex resources lay in
- Manages institute files which hold the identity of the senders
- Generates nice default LaTex letters using the letter.cls LaTeX class, with following features:
- support generation for Registered Letters (Lettres recommandées)
- automatically set the letter date to the current date
- support the link to an institute (previously created)
letter-example.pdfWhy ?
Yes ! This is what I personally use; mainly because:
- LaTex is free, portable, flexible, sexy and produces very high quality documents.
- I'm a coder and I just can't imagine using a WYSIWYG editor for writing something.
Installation
Prerequisites
So you want to play with it. I assume the following is already installed:
To install XeLaTeX, I would suggest you to use TexLive core or full package. But you are free to use any other distribution. You can have a look to my environment under Arch.
Project
Install generator-latex-mail using npm:
npm install -g generator-latex-mailAlternately you can install the module directly from sources. You will need git for that.
git clone https://github.com/ccamel/generator-latex-mail.git
cd generator-latex-mail
npm linkGetting started
Create the workspace
Before anything else, you need to create a workspace. For that, you just have to invoke the latex-mail generator with yeoman and let you guide.
yo latex-mailYou will be asked to answer a few questions.
? What is the name of the workspace you want to create ? mailsAs a result, you will get the following directory structure.
[workspace] # folder created by template
├── assets # contains all resources used by LaTex
│ ├── fonts # contains alternative fonts
│ └── institutes # contains the institutes
│ └── default.ins
├── letters # contains all the letters
│ └── letter.tex
├── outputs # contains all the pdf generated from the letters
│ └── letter.pdf
├── temp # folder containing temporary files
├── gulp.js # the gulp file used to process tex files
└─ package.json # npm dependencies used by gulp
Create an institute
An institute is a LaTex file containing the information about the sender of a letter, like the name, the address, the phone number.
The creation of an institute is performed with the institute sub-generator.
yo latex-mail:instituteYou will be asked to answer a few questions.
? What is the name of the institute (a file that describes the sender) default
? Full name John Doe
? Address 1 10 rue de la Pomme
? Address 2
? City Paris
? Zipcode 75010
? Phone 06 01 02 03 04
? Email [email protected]
create assets/institutes/default.insAs a result, you will get the new institute file in the assets/institutes folder. You can of course freely modify it to
adapt it to your needs.
Create a new letter
Creating a new letter is fairly simple, thanks to the letter sub-generator.
yo latex-mail:letterYou will be asked to answer a few questions.
? Name of the letter (without extension) letter
? What institute do you want yo use ? default
? Subject of the letter Réclamation
? Does the letter a Registered Letter or not (If 'yes', a special mention is added to the subject of the letter). YesAs a result, you will get the new letter file in the letters folder. Modify it with the editor of your choice.
Make PDF
I use XeLaTex which is a TeX typesetting engine with support of Unicode and modern font technologies.
The process is driven by Gulp which is a streaming build system. The pipeline generation is as such:
letters/*.tex -> [XelaTex] -> outputs/*.pdfThe process is idempotent: only letters that have been modified since last generation are built again.
To launch the process, just invoke the Gulp default task:
gulpSamples
Technologies
