Dirk Eddelbuettel

Wed, 11 Jan 2023

linl 0.0.5 on CRAN: Extended Background Support

A new release of our linl package for writing LaTeX letters with (R)markdown is now on CRAN. linl makes it easy to write letters in markdown, with some extra bells and whistles thanks to some cleverness chiefly by Aaron.

This version add extended header and footer placement support thanks to an included copy of wallpaper.sty as added in a nice PR by Iñaki. As the previous release was well over three years ago, we also enhanced continuous integration in the process. The repository README.md shows some screenshots of input and output files.

The NEWS entry follows:

Changes in linl version 0.0.5 (2023-01-11)

  • Several updates to continuous integration and testing

  • Enhanced placment functionality for images in header and footer via wallpaper.sty and new x and y offset variable (Iñaki Ucar in #30)

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a comparison to the previous release. More information is on the linl page. For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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Wed, 23 Oct 2019

linl 0.0.4: Now with footer

A new release of our linl package for writing LaTeX letters with (R)markdown just arrived on CRAN. linl makes it easy to write letters in markdown, with some extra bells and whistles thanks to some cleverness chiefly by Aaron.

This version now supports a (pdf, png, …) footer along with the already-supported header, thanks to an intiial PR by Michal Bojanowski to which Aaron added nice customization for scale and placement (as supported by LaTeX package wallpaper). I also added support for continued integration testing at Travis CI via a custom Docker RMarkdown container—which is something I should actually say more about at another point.

Here is screenshot of the vignette showing the simple input for some moderately fancy output (now with a footer):

The NEWS entry follows:

Changes in linl version 0.0.4 (2019-10-23)

  • Continuous integration tests at Travis are now running via custom Docker container (Dirk in #21).

  • A footer for the letter can now be specified (Michal Bojanowski in #23 fixing #10).

  • The header and footer options be customized more extensively, and are documented (Aaron in #25 and #26).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a comparison to the previous release. More information is on the linl page. For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub. For the first year, GitHub will match your contributions.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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Sat, 15 Dec 2018

linl 0.0.3: Micro release

Our linl package for writing LaTeX letter with (R)markdown had a fairly minor release today, following up on the previous release well over a year ago. This version just contains one change which Mark van der Loo provided a few months ago with a clean PR. As another user was just bitten the same issue when using an included letterhead – which was fixed but unreleased – we decided it was time for a release. So there it is.

linl makes it easy to write letters in markdown, with some extra bells and whistles thanks to some cleverness chiefly by Aaron.

Here is screenshot of the vignette showing the simple input for some moderately fancy output:

The NEWS entry follows:

Changes in linl version 0.0.3 (2018-12-15)

  • Correct LaTeX double loading of package color with different options (Mark van der Loo in #18 fixing #17).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a comparison to the previous release. More information is on the linl page. For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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Tue, 31 Oct 2017

linl 0.0.2: Couple improvements

Following up on the initial 0.0.1 release of linl, Aaron and I are happy to announce release 0.0.2 which reached the CRAN network on Sunday in a smooth 'CRAN-pretest-publish' auto-admittance. linl provides a simple-yet-powerful Markdown---and RMarkdown---wrapper around the venerable LaTeX letter class; see below for an expanded example also included as the package vignette.

This versions sets a few sensible default values for font, font size, margins, signature (non-)indentation and more; it also expands the documentation.

The NEWS entry follows:

Changes in tint version 0.0.2 (2017-10-29)

  • Set a few defaults for a decent-looking skeleton and template: font, fontsize, margins, left-justify closing (#3)

  • Blockquote display is now a default as well (#4).

  • Updated skeleton.Rmd and vignette source accordingly

  • Documented new default options (#5 and #6).

  • Links are now by default printed as footnotes (#9).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a comparison to the previous release. More information is on the tint page. For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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Sun, 22 Oct 2017

linl 0.0.1: linl is not Letter

Aaron Wolen and I are pleased to announce the availability of the initial 0.0.1 release of our new linl package on the CRAN network. It provides a simple-yet-powerful Markdown---and RMarkdown---wrapper the venerable LaTeX letter class. Aaron had done the legwork in the underlying pandoc-letter repository upon which we build via proper rmarkdown integration.

The package also includes a LaTeX trick or two: optional header and signature files, nicer font, better size, saner default geometry and more. See the following screenshot which shows the package vignette---itself a simple letter---along with (most of) its source:

The initial (short) NEWS entry follows:

Changes in tint version 0.0.1 (2017-10-17)

  • Initial CRAN release

The date is a little off; it took a little longer than usual for the good folks at CRAN to process the initial submission. We expect future releases to be more timely.

For questions or comments use the issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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