Directory macros/latex209/contrib/laletter
README
LALETTER.STY This is a LaTeX style that is used at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to format letters in accordance with rules established in the Laboratory's "Office Procedures Manual." There is a choice of Computer Modern fonts or PostScript fonts. Letters can be printed in Roman or typewriter typefaces. Multiple addresses can be printed on a letter. A letter can be sent to a mailing list; mailing labels and return addresses can be printed for each letter on the mailing list. The following features can be included in a letter: a salutation, a subject line, a reference line, a complimentary close, a signature line, an enclosures list, an attachments list, a copy list, or a distribution list. For more information read the "1989 Conference Proceedings" issue of "TUGBOAT." Or read the accompanying "LaTeX Letter Reference" in the file laletter.ref. THE FILES There are four files that have to do with the LaTeX letter style at Los Alamos National Laboratory. laletter.doc is the commented style file. laletter.sty is the uncommented style file. laletter.ref is an ASCII version of the laletter manual. lettest.tex is a test file for laletter.sty that can also be used as a template for users' own letters. ALTERING THE STYLE FILE If you need to adapt the style file to your own institution's letters, you should first run lettest.tex through latex and print the dvi file. Then read laletter.ref to get a feel for the variety of output that can be expected. The easiest way to change the header is to design a letter header for your organization that will fit in place of Los Alamos Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 You can then alter the commands that change the fonts (search for \@latwentyeight and \@spectwelve), and alter the \put commands in \@printmemopaper that print out the header. Also get rid of the "University of California" \put statement. Your company's style may demand that you alter the part of the header that prints the date, mail stop, telephone, and so forth. In that case you will have to change the relevant \put statements in \@printletterpaper, as well as those in \@printfirstpagerightheader. The numbers in the parentheses in the \put statements are in points to the right from the left edge of the paper and down from the top edge of the paper. You may need to mess around with the value of \@countbotheader. This variable is used for three purposes. It is the distance to the bottom of the left side of our header (Los Alamos, NM 87545), as well as the distance to the bottom of the right side of our header (TELEPHONE:). It is also used by \def\@printto to figure out where to begin printing the address. If your header is all in one column, or if your header's right and left sides have different vertical placement, make appropriate alterations. Hopefully, you can live with most of our letter's style, such as the way addresses, signatures, and distribution lists are done. I tried to make the code as modular as possible for the sake of my own sanity, but I'm sure that I missed a lot of opportunities to make it easy to alter the style for new stylistic requirements. To use PostScript fonts with laletter.sty, you must be using ArborText's DVIPS. If you are using another PostScript device driver, you will have to alter the appropriate \font commands in \@chooseheaderfonts and \@choosebodyfonts. You will have to make fancier changes if you are using classification labels. At the end of laletter.doc, there is a list of all the variables and macros used in laletter.sty that are not defined in LaTeX. Search for "END OF LALETTER.DOC". There are also two lists of the more important macros defined in laletter.doc. One is sorted alphabetically, and the other is sorted by line number. CHANGING THE .DOC FILE INTO A .STY FILE I use sed (a UNIX utility) to turn my laletter.doc file into a laletter.sty file. If you put the commands below into a file named sedfile, run sed -f sedfile laletter.doc > laletter.sty s/%.*/%/g s/[ ][ ]*/ /g s/^ // /^[ ]*%/d /^[ ]*$/d //d The parts of the lines that read [ ] are actually square brackets enclosing a blank and a tab character. Line 1 removes everything that follows %s. Line 2 converts multiple blanks into single spaces. Line 3 gets rid of blanks at the beginning of lines. Line 4 gets rid of lines containing only blanks and comments. Line 5 gets rid of lines containing only blanks. Line 6 gets rid of lines containing Control-L characters. This script only works because I follow certain conventions when I write TeX code. For example, if you use a blank line instead of an explicit \par token, the sed script will fail. \def\x{abc def} is NOT the same as \def\x{abc def} There may be other constructions that don't work with this sed script, so be careful. It IS really nice to have a commented doc file as well as its quicker running sty file, so it may be worth the extra care that it takes. WHERE I AM Feel free to write e-mail (sxs@lanl.gov) or phone (505-667-5460) or write a letter: Steve Sydoriak Los Alamos National Laboratory Group C-2, MS B253 Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 I might be able to help you stumble through some awkward piece of code.
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laletter – Los Alamos letter style
Format letters for Los Alamos, in accordance with the Laboratory’s “Office Procedures Manual”
Package | laletter |
Version | 1989-09-18 |
Licenses | License that prevents distribution |
Copyright | 1990 The Regents of the University of California |
Maintainer | Steve Sydoriak |
Topics | LaTeX209 Letter |