Cover Letter improvement - proposal

[kassyss]

Hi,
I am using brilliant-cv and enjoy it a lot. I don't know much about typst and i am not a coder.

I think the cover letter could be considerably improved.

1. Language relation
   Because the "correspondence standards" and layout of a letter are specific to each country, it would be wise to place letter.typ in the modules_lang folders
   For example in France, just after the recipient name and recipient address, there is "citty, le date" on the right!

2. the letter.typ could be called in cv.typ
   but whatever letter.typ position it should be generated after the cv genration with a page break
   #importModules(( "resumepro", "professional", "letter.typ", "education", // "projects", // "certificates", // "publications", "skills", ))

3. Inherit personal data from metadata.toml
   give an option to select individually personal.data first_name, last_name, phone.........and even [personal.info.custom-x] in cover letter. Usually these data are common between cv and cover letter

4. no forced case for addresses and multiline for RecipientAddress
   currently, myAddress, RecipientAddress are uppercase, myAddress case could inherit case from original data in in metadata.toml. And it would be nice to have case choice for the multi-line RecipientAddress.

recipientAddress, Subject, date and signature data should stay in letter.typ as well as letter content.
It would also be nice to have an option to specify the date manually.

Just my 2 cents, even i don't know how much work is needed for eventually bring this improvements if judged to be useful

Best regards

[yunanwg]

Hi @kassyss, thanks for the comment!

You've pointed it out correctly -- the cover letter section is kind of out of sync with the latest changes in the project. Partly because I don't have the full capacity to take care of everything, and also because from use feedbacks I have the impression that it's less and less used nowadays (even for me actually).

Well noted on all these points, they are useful and valid. I will put this into the project, but also would love call also for contribution from community, especially those who use cover letters.

What would be super helpful is that if you could create "sub-issues" for each of these bullet points, so that we can track and attack them accordingly.

Thanks again!

[kassyss]

Hi @yunanwg , you are welcome !
Thank you for your feedback, i appreciate that you consider my comments revelant.
I also understand that doing everything alone is not always possible and agree that nowadays the cover letter is not always required for job application while still remaining needed in some case.
I wanted to create sub-issues but didn't find a way to do so, as explained there maybe i don't have the necessary permission?...
Have a nice day

[yunanwg]

Sorry @kassyss for this issue getting lost when time flies.

Indeed the sub-issues can only be created by maintainers. However, after giving a second thought on this subject, honestly I see a lot of work to be done to make it theoretically more inclusive considering your point and all edge cases. They are valid, but unfortunately I find myself rather hand tied to attack them alone.

I will leave this issue open if someone also finds this matter substantial and is willing to contribute to improve this, I'd be happy to help and review the PRs!

[kassyss]

Hello @yunanwg
No worries at all 😉
I am fully aware that this requires a lot of work and
that we are too often running after time.
I just wanted to share a quick point of view after using this beautiful template.
Thank you for your answers, and I wish you all the best moving forward
Take care

[yunanwg]

Hey @kassyss, coming back to this after some time — I finally sat down and did a thorough audit of the cover letter module and found it was indeed quite out of sync with the rest of the project. I've put together a PR to address the actionable items you raised:

PR #164 covers the following improvements:

• Inherit personal data from metadata.toml (Item 3): sender-address now defaults to auto and reads from metadata.personal.address, so you no longer need to duplicate your address between the CV and cover letter
• Address case control (Item 4): Added an address-style parameter — use "normal" to disable the forced smallcaps on addresses
• Multiline addresses (Item 4): Now properly documented with examples in the template
• Manual date (Item 4): This was already supported (the date parameter accepts any string), but now better documented

I also took the opportunity to sync the letter module with recent CV improvements — keyword injection (ATS), font size from config, non-Latin font handling, and a bug fix for non-Latin languages crashing when custom fonts are configured.

---

Regarding the two remaining points:

Language-specific letter layouts (Item 1) and letter integrated into CV (Item 2) — after careful consideration, I've decided not to pursue these for now. It's not so much a capacity issue, but rather that the implementation complexity and ongoing maintenance burden would be significant. Supporting country-specific letter conventions (French DIN-style right-aligned dates, German formatting standards, etc.) would require a fundamentally different architecture for the letter module, and keeping all those regional layouts correct and up-to-date over time is a heavy commitment. Similarly, merging letter and CV into a single document would require rethinking how page setup works across the two modules.

That said, if anyone in the community feels strongly about these and wants to contribute, I'd be happy to discuss the approach and review PRs!