TITLE: A Pandoc template for converting markdown letters to LaTeX
PDFs
DATE: 2019-10-10
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================
On my current trend of loving LaTeX, I have been writing letters
which I needed to print and send in the post in LaTeX. But, this
seemed like overkill, especially since letters are almost always
plain text and lots of aspects are reused such as the address
header. Markdown is what I use to write plain text notes, but LaTeX
formatted PDFs look pretty, so I came up with a template for
converting Markdown formatted letters into PDFs, via pandoc, with
LaTeX. The template lives in ~/.pandoc/templates/letter.tex and can
be used like this:
pandoc letter.md --template=letter.tex -o letter.pdf
The template is below. It's also my very first foray into
templating LaTeX with pandoc, so it might seem quite simplistic:
\documentclass{letter}
% Define page geometry
\usepackage[margin=2.5cm]{geometry}
% Set font
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
% Image handling
\usepackage{graphicx}
% Push Closing to left margin
\longindentation=0pt
\signature{\includegraphics[width=0.2\textwidth]{/Users/user/docs/sh
ort_sig.png} \\ $if(author)$$author$$else$John L. Godlee$endif$} %
Your name for the signature at the bottom
$if(address)$
\address{$for(address)$$address$$sep$\\$endfor$}
$else$
\address{This is \\ an address \\ Liverpool \\ LV12 P46 \\
[email protected]}
$endif$
$if(date)$
\date{$date$}
$endif$
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{} % Name/title of the addressee
$if(opening)$
\opening{\textbf{$opening$}}
$else$
\opening{\textbf{Dear Sir or Madam,}}
$endif$
$body$
\vspace{2\parskip} % Extra whitespace for aesthetics
$if(closing)$
\closing{$closing$}
$else$
\closing{Yours sincerely,}
$endif$
\vspace{2\parskip} % Extra whitespace for aesthetics
\end{letter}
\end{document}
When writing the Markdown document, YAML header material adds
details like the address and the sign-off:
---
author: John Godlee
closing: Yours faithfully,
opening: Dear all,
date: 36th Octobry 1849
address:
- 157 Market Road
- Sofa City
- United Kingdom
...
This is the body of my letter it will say some stuff that
hopefully will be formatted in multiple gorgeous paragraphs. I have
a pen a laptop a sticky note an apple a computer screen a phone a
handkerchief a desk a mouse a keyboard.
$if(address)$ is an if statement that tests whether the YAML
variable address exists. If it does, each element of address is
placed inside a LaTeX \address{} command, separated by \\ to
trigger a new line, using $for(address)$ and $endfor$ as the Pandoc
equivalent of a for loop. The other $if(..)$ statements work in the
same way.
