Richard,
Thank you so much. The other suggestions I received are very helpful for
sending several
letters at once, which I may do someday, but, as I am mostly in need of
replacing names
throughout long "stand-alone" documents, documents which contain standard
content,
your suggestions are exactly what I need.
John
On Friday, March 31, 2017 6:13:49 PM PDT Richard Heck wrote:
> On 03/31/2017 04:05 PM, John White wrote:
> > I use lyx and am using it more and more in what I call "mailmerge"
> > mode, similar to how I once used mailmerge in Wordstar. Once I have a
> > good form document (say a will or a contract) I replace the names
> > with, say "@name1" and then I replace all @name1 with the new data,
> > e.g. "Judy Jones".
> >
> >
> >
> > This works fine, but on longer documents (say a 40 page document)
> > with, say @name1 through @name12, it can get a bit confusing. I put
> > all the replacement data in a separate lyx file and go back and forth
> > to that file until I have made all replacements.
> >
> >
> >
> > I use article class.
> >
> >
> >
> > Is there perhaps a better layout or class or perhaps something else
> > lyx that I should be using?
>
> The easiest way to do this would be to use some LaTeX in your LyX
> document. Where you now have "@name1" put, say:
> \nameone
> in ERT. Now in the preamble, say, put:
> \def\nameone{Judy Jones}
> This is a LaTeX variable, or "macro".
>
> You could also do something like:
> \def\nameonef{Judy}
> \def\nameonel{Jones}
> \def\nameone{\nameonef \nameonel}
> and now you have access to first, last, and full names.
>
> You can also put all of that in some separate LyX file, if you like, but
> as ERT, and include it at the beginning of the file.
>
> Caveats:
>
> LaTeX does not allow numbers in variable names, only letters (well,
> close enough). Hence "one".
>
> You'll have to be careful to avoid naming conflicts with what LaTeX
> already predefines. One way to do this is to use names like, e.g.,
> \MERGEnameone.
>
> You may run into problems with spaces after such macros. This is because
> LaTeX sees the space after the macro as just separating it from what
> follows, not as an actual space. You can handle this in a couple ways.
> First, in the LyX file, you can do:
> \nameone{}
> in ERT. Now the braces terminate the macro, and LaTeX will treat a
> following space as an actual space. The other option is to use the
> xspace package. So the macro gets defined as:
> \def\nameone{Judy Jones\xspace}
> and you put
> \usepackage{xspace}
> into the preamble. The \xspace macro adds a space, but only if what
> follows isn't punctuation, etc. It isn't perfect, but it usually works.
>
> This is a very simple approach. Try searching "latex mail merge" for
> more sophisticated ones.
>
> Richard
