Roland rote,
> People I say, let us make a __nice__ letter class, something that
> really shows some features, a costumized letter head with a postscript
> figure maybe, list bank connections on the bottom, attachments and so
> on, I think Rick had already started in that direction. And then lets
> ask one of the code wizzards to implement just a little more Wysiwym
> for writing a letter... If it is possible to draw a table, then could
> one start there and take some of that code to actually draw a letter
> head ?
I didn't really try to lyxify it, though. I think it's roughly what
we'd want, but it's really an ugly latex hack (i think it's ugly, but i
don't understand tex well enough to ahve an infomred opinion.).
FWIW, the basic issues/lessons were:
1) latex letterhead stuff seems to assume and have written in stone
that if your letterhead is different on the first page from other
pages, it's because you're using preprinted letterhead. Thus whatever
is specified for the first page is simply ignored.
2) to get around 1, you must respecify *after* latex is done specifying
the letterhead (this is an awkward sentence. The point is that order
is important, and it was what i found to be a non-intuitive order).
3) Lyx can't (probably ever, unless it changes directions) specify the
pieces in a way that would let people produce common letterheads; it
will have to be raw latex, *or*
4) we could have a class with some basic notions defined:
abovebarleft abovebar center abovebarright
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
belowbarleft belowbar center belowbarright
and have each of these fields show up as a name waiting for an argument,
or as a style, as we do in the letter class. That is, we'd assume
these 6 fields and the bar, and allow specification of font, size, and
centering for the fields, and the weight, style, and length of the bar.
I think that these 7 would cover most small business letterhead that
isn't *too* exotic, and i see no way of covering those.
Oh, also allow for specification of exact position of included .eps's
in the letterhead & footer. Hmm, we also need three positions for the
footer, and either the same 10 or a subset for second page.
Figuring out the latex letterhead was nearly as much work as
implementing mailmerge . . .
I know that some of what i'm suggesting here is quite outside
latex-think, but for a letterhead, it's a matter of a once and for all
exact specification, not what latex thinks things should look like.
rick
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