[Tex/LaTex] Adding a signature on an online job application

fontsletterspdftex

Nowadays many job applications are sent in digital form as PDF. We use of course LaTeX to create such. Usually you add a cover letter to your CV and credentials. If you sent this as print-out by classic mail you sign this letter (at least in Germany), but what (and how) do you do for an online application?

I would say either:

  1. leave it empty
  2. add your name in the usual font as normal text
  3. add your real signature as scanned image
  4. add your name in a special font so that it look more like a signature (but you can still see that it isn't a real one)

I'm planning to go with the last method and I'm looking for suitable fonts for it which I can use with PDFLaTeX (XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX answers are fine too, but will be taken as non-competitive). I would also be happy to get some style guidelines if I should not got with an other method (with a rationale to avoid subjective opinions).

I already had a look at
Good Style of Creating a Signature all within LaTeX which is similar but still too different. I don't need or want any rule and the shown font in the accepted answer are looking too real.

Best Answer

Here is a play-by-play of how one can do it using potrace. It is similar to autotrace and provides a command line functionality/interface.

  1. Download potrace. It is available for virtually every distribution out there.
  2. Unpack it.

  3. Provide a signature in (say) BMP high resolution format (click to enlarge and see the quality):

    enter image description here

  4. Store this file signature.bmp in your potrace folder.

  5. Execute from the command line:

    >potrace signature.bmp -b PDF -o signature.pdf

    to create a PDF of signature.bmp. Alternatively, just executing

    >potrace signature.bmp

    would yield signature.eps that can be converted using epstopdfsignature.eps. This uses the default potrace settings/options and produces as output (click to enlarge and see the quality):

    random person PDF

    Other tracing options are also available. See the potrace usage page for details on the type of options you can specify.

  6. Include it in your document...

    enter image description here

    \documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}% Remove paragraph indent
\begin{document}
\hspace*{0.5\linewidth}
\begin{minipage}{0.4\linewidth}
Random Institute \par
Random City 1000 \par
Randomia \par
\today
\end{minipage}

To whom it may concern: \par \bigskip

Hire me, it'll be worth your while. \par \bigskip

Sincerely, \par \medskip

\includegraphics[height=1.5\baselineskip]{signature} \par
Random Randofsky \par
Randomville
\end{document}

potrace also forms part of Inkscape's trace bitmap functionality, allowing you to use it in a GUI environment as well.

Related Question