[texhax] Job applications in LaTeX

[Steve Murgaski]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> Steve Murgaski wrote:
<snip>
> > I made a resume/CV using Andrew McNabb's really interesting
> > template at http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/linux/latexres/ I've
> > converted a resume I made with that to pdf, and am really happy
> > with it.
> >
> > Now, of course, I need to make a cover letter.  I'd like my cover
> > letter to have a similar font and formatting to the resume I made
> > from McNabb's template.  How can I do this?  How do I change the
> > default font for my document?
>
> \usepackage{tgpagella}

Thanks, that's interesting.  I'm trying hard to understand what packages do,
so any more information you can give me about what that command does would
be helpful.

I found this entry in the TeX catalogue:
"tex-gyre-pagella"
http://mirror.its.dal.ca/ctan/help/Catalogue/entries/tex-gyre-pagella.html
"A font family that extends URW Palladio L.

"The TeX Gyre Pagella family of serif fonts is based on URW Palladio L. The
original font, Palatino, was designed by Hermann Zapf in the 1940s for the
Stempel type foundry.

"The standard faces of Pagella have been greatly extended, and contain
nearly 1100 glyphs each. The family is available both in Adobe Type 1 and in
OpenType formats, and LaTeX support (for use with a variety of encodings) is
provided. Vietnamese characters were added by Han The Thanh."

So I'm assuming that \usepackage{tgpagella} instructs the TeX compiler to
use this family of fonts (as its default?)  If I put that command above
\usepackage[t1]{fontenc} would that cause only t1 fonts in the tgpagella
family to be used?

> If you look at Andrew McNabb's example PDF file carefully, you'll see
> that the "T" and the "D" look very ugly on screen and maybe even on
> paper.  You could also add this line to your CV in order to fix them.

McNabb's resume template has commands in it like:
\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont

Would that command be effected by including \usepackage{tgpagella} in the
preamble?

> > I have made some sample letters using the built-in "letter"
> > document class, and scrlttr2, but I don't understand how to control
> > the font beyond [10/11/12pt] in the initial setting of the document
> > class.  What else can I do to change the standard font of my
> > letter?
>
> Specify 11pt, or better 12pt, in the preamble and use relative sizes
> like \large or \small when needed.

If I increase the font by using \large in a lot of places, that wouldn't be
very elegant.  Decreasing it again would mean going through and taking out
all those \large commands.  Is there no better way to get a greater than 12
point font if I want it as the default?


>
> > Pointers to useful documents/tutorials would be good also.  I've
> > found a lot of quite advanced treatises about fonts, but nothing
> > that just spells out for me how to set a default font for my
> > document and start writing.
>
>  http://tug.org/begin
>
> You can also try to run
>
>  texdoc lshort
>
> on the command line.

That command isn't working for me (in Windows Vista).  I get the error,
"Documentation for lshort could not be found"

> There are also many books about LaTeX...

I'll keep it in mind. ;)