Quarto for letters?

[sammo3182]

I used to use linl package to create dynamic letters in r. Is there a way to do that in Quarto?

[jjallaire]

This could be adapted for use with Quarto as a custom format (https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/formats.html). See also some more LaTeX specific documentation here: https://quarto.org/docs/journals/formats.html

[eeholmes]

@sammo3182 As far as I can tell, linl is a "skin" for the latex letters document class. Thus you can just use that document class directly in Quarto using the letters syntax. Here is a MWE qmd.

Note, the letters document class is highly restrictive. It doesn't have a figure environment, so none of the niftly quarto features for figure layout is going to work. Creating an extension that extends the letter document class to allow a few more standard latex environments will be needed.

---
format:
  pdf:
    documentclass: letter
    keep-tex: true
    geometry: 
      - "top=1in"
      - "bottom=1in"
      - "left=2in"
      - "right=2in"
    include-in-header: 
      text: |
        \usepackage{hyperref}
        \signature{Joe Bloggs}
        \address{21 Bridge Street \\ Smallville \\ Dunwich DU3 4WE}
---

```{=tex}
\begin{letter}{Director \\ Doe \& Co \\ 35 Anthony Road
\\ Newport \\ Ipswich IP3 5RT}
\opening{Dear Sir or Madam:}
```

I am writing to you about a project I am doing. I hope you like this table:

```{r echo=FALSE}
knitr::kable(mtcars[1:2,])
```

The figure is also informative.

```{r echo=FALSE, warning=FALSE, fig.height=2}
library(ggplot2)
df <- data.frame(
  gp = factor(rep(letters[1:3], each = 10)),
  y = rnorm(30)
)
ds <- do.call(rbind, lapply(split(df, df$gp), function(d) {
  data.frame(mean = mean(d$y), sd = sd(d$y), gp = d$gp)
}))
ggplot(df, aes(gp, y)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_point(data = ds, aes(y = mean), colour = 'red', size = 3)
```


Thank you for your time and consideration.

I look forward to your reply.

```{=tex}
\closing{Yours Faithfully,}

\vfill

\ps

P.S. You can find the full text of GFDL license at
\url{http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html}.

\encl{Copyright permission form}

\end{letter}
```

[eeholmes]

Here's what the output looks like:

[sammo3182]

Aha! That's amazing. Thank you for the example!

[mcanouil]

I started a draft for an extension: https://github.com/mcanouil/quarto-letter

I need to figure somethings out with the Pandoc template framework though.

[mcanouil]

Closing this as completed, as now there are several Quarto extension providing letter format.