letters
I'm relatively new to TeX, which means I did nothing more than homework and some math things with it.
Now I'd like to write invoices with LaTeX (for reusability etc.)
I am not searching for a template.
What I'm looking for is actually more a starting point and maybe some resources that already helped other people to get started with writing invoices or similar kinds of documents.
Where should I start in order to learn to write more complex documents with LaTeX?
What helped you?
Taking the definition from the article class, I get good results with
\begin{filecontents}{letter.bib}
@article{First,
author = "Other, A. N.",
title = "Some things {I} did",
journal = "J. Irreproducible Results",
year = "2011"
}
@article{Second,
author = "Aaa, S{\o}mebloke",
title = "Tigers",
journal = "Ann. Improbable Res.",
year = "2011"
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{letter}
\makeatletter
\newenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
{\list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
{\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
\leftmargin\labelwidth
\advance\leftmargin\labelsep
\usecounter{enumiv}%
\let\p@enumiv\@empty
\renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
\sloppy
\clubpenalty4000
\@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
\widowpenalty4000%
\sfcode`\.\@m}
{\def\@noitemerr
{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
\endlist}
\newcommand\newblock{\hskip .11em\@plus.33em\@minus.07em}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Some person}
\opening{Hello}
Some text \cite{First}, more text \cite{Second}.
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{letter}
\end{letter}
\end{document}
I've used the unsrt style here, as plain would put the references in alphabetical rather than citation order. I've also modified the definition of thebiliography a little, removing the section-related stuff as this does not really seem relevant to a letter. (I also took out the code related to the openbib option for the article class, again as it does not seem relevant.)
The second edit to the question asks about natbib. For me, this works if I load natbib after defining thebiliography and if I make \bibsection 'safe':
\begin{filecontents}{letter.bib}
@article{First,
author = "Other, A. N.",
title = "Some things {I} did",
journal = "J. Irreproducible Results",
year = "2011"
}
@article{Second,
author = "Aaa, S{\o}mebloke",
title = "Tigers",
journal = "Ann. Improbable Res.",
year = "2011"
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{letter}
\makeatletter
\newenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
{\list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
{\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
\leftmargin\labelwidth
\advance\leftmargin\labelsep
\usecounter{enumiv}%
\let\p@enumiv\@empty
\renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
\sloppy
\clubpenalty4000
\@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
\widowpenalty4000%
\sfcode`\.\@m}
{\def\@noitemerr
{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
\endlist}
\newcommand\newblock{\hskip .11em\@plus.33em\@minus.07em}
\makeatother
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib}
\let\bibsection\relax
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Some person}
\opening{Hello}
Some text \cite{First}, more text \cite{Second}.
\bibliographystyle{unsrtnat}
\bibliography{letter}
\end{letter}
\end{document}
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.
potrace. It is available for virtually every distribution out there.Provide a signature in (say) BMP high resolution format (click to enlarge and see the quality):
Store this file signature.bmp in your potrace folder.
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):
Other tracing options are also available. See the potrace usage page for details on the type of options you can specify.
Include it in your document...
\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.
Best Answer
There's a list of resources in CTAN that could be useful: Writing invoices