Message-Id: <9210040052.AA00386@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Sun, 4 Oct 92 01:52:55 CET
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: Letter style
Status: R


Reasons for keeping letter:
- If presented correctly to begin with, letters are not too bad.
  I use letter.sty in my LaTeX classes to make concrete the idea
  of document types (e.g., the difference between article, report
  and book) since it's so dramatically different in the set of
  structures supported.
- One thing TeX (and by association LaTeX) does well is
  data-driven publishing. The number one instance of this is---
  form letters. letter.sty really doesn't take a whole lot of
  time to learn.
- Why learn multiple packages? If I didn't do letters in LaTeX or
  TeX, I'd have no means of typesetting them.

Now there are improvements to be made to thhe standard letter
styles, e.g., providing built-in ability for form-letters,
approaching label printing differently (I've been working on a
replacement letter style for 2.09 which occasioned the earlier
discussion), etc. My thought is to handle printing envelopes or
mailing labels from the letter file in a separate LaTeX run (it's
difficult otherwise to separate out the labels from the letters
on some printing systems). Form letters are handled by saying
\begin{formletter}{FILENAME}
\end{formletter}
rather than
\begin{letter}{ADDRESS}
\end{letter}
The format of the formletter data file is not yet decided on, but
I'm working on that.

-dh