I have been using Latex for several years as a substitute for Microsoft Word or Libre-Office. As everyone may know, we have to write infinite letters to different – external or internal – addressees. There was a moment in the past when I was fed up with the whole ‘writing a letter’-process. Why? Because starting Word, formatting all the different parts of the letter, seems to be more time consuming than writing the content itself.
Since I have gathered enough experience with Latex from several seminar thesis and diploma submission during my studies, I started to search weather there is a German document class which I am able to use to my correspondences. And I found a very cool Latexdocument class called dinbrief1.
The dinbrief document class enhanced and accelerated greatly the entire ‘writing a letter’-process.
Available Tex Live Document Production System
I assume that you have already installed a working Tex Live version on your system TexLive (Tex Users Group n.d.)
Ubuntu user, since, as it is often the case, can use the sudo apt-get install texlive texlive-lang-german texlive-doc-de texlive-latex-extra lean back and enjoy the show.
Gummi a Simple Latex Editor
I recommand Gummi2 everyone who want to work with Latex. It is very simple to use and shows you instantly an auto-generated preview of what you have coded Gummi.
Simple Letter Template
I use this template for all letters I write:
\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{dinbrief}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{ae}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\address{Your name \\ Your Street \\ Your city}
\backaddress{Back-Your name \\ Back-Your Street \\ Back-City}
\centeraddress
\signature{Your Signature}
\place{Your-Date-Place}
\subject{Letter-Subject}
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Addressee Name \\ Addressee Street \\ Addressee City}
\opening{Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam
nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam
erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores
et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur
sadipscing
elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore
magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et
justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea
takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
\closing{Dankend erwarteten wir Ihre Antwort und verbleiben mit
freundlichen Grüßen}
\end{letter}
\end{document}
And the result looks like that:
Additional Commands
The dinbrief has some more commands which I want to mention. I like these commands especially when I write letters to authorities and I just want to avoid any mistakes regarding what my letter is referring to. For this purpose the creators of the document class provides some additional commands:
| phone | Sets the area code and phone number of the sender. |
| yourmail | In many cases the sender has sent you an process/document identifier. Use this identifier in your document to show what your response refers to. |
| writer | The clerk’s name who handled your issue. |
| sign | Your sign if you have one. |
Just for the demonstration purposes I adjusted the above template and add some of the described commands:
\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{dinbrief}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{ae}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\address{Your name \\ Your Street \\ Your city}
\backaddress{Back-Your name \\ Back-Your Street \\ Back-City}
\centeraddress
\signature{Your Signature}
\place{Your-Date-Place}
\yourmail{01.04.93}
\sign{My-Sign}
\yourmail{Your-Sign}
\phone{040}{123456}
\subject{Letter-Subject}
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Addressee Name \\ Addressee Street \\ Addressee City}
\opening{Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam
nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam
erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores
et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur
sadipscing
elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore
magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et
justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea
takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
\closing{Dankend erwarteten wir Ihre Antwort und verbleiben mit
freundlichen Grüßen}
\end{letter}
\end{document}
And the final document:
Bibliography
- 1.dinbrief – German letter DIN style. CTAN Comprehensive TEX Archive Network. https://www.ctan.org/pkg/dinbrief. Published November 12, 2017. Accessed November 12, 2017.
- 2.Gummi Contributors . Gummi. GitHub. https://github.com/alexandervdm/gummi. Published November 12, 2017. Accessed November 12, 2017.