\par in command argument

\par in command argument

[Wybo Dekker]

I'm trying to write a letter style so that I can say:

\input letter.sty
\Address{name\\street\\city}
% ... define several other things...
\Letter{
Dear John,

....

Love, Mary
}

But the paragraphs in \Letter's argument cause trouble:

This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
(./t.tex
Runaway argument?
{ ....
! Paragraph ended before \Letter was complete.

Is there a solution to this?
-- 
Wybo

Re: \par in command argument

[Andres Loeh]

Hi there,

> But the paragraphs in \Letter's argument cause trouble:
> 
> This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
> (./t.tex
> Runaway argument?
> { ....
> ! Paragraph ended before \Letter was complete.
> 
> Is there a solution to this?

Yes. Use

\long\def

to define \Letter, or define an environment

\startletter \stopletter

(for instance with \definestartstop) to do the job.

Best,
  Andres

-- 

Andres Loeh, Universiteit Utrecht

mailto:andres@cs.uu.nl     mailto:mail@andres-loeh.de
http://www.andres-loeh.de

Re: \par in command argument

[Wybo Dekker]

On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Andres Loeh wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> > But the paragraphs in \Letter's argument cause trouble:
> >
> > This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
> > (./t.tex
> > Runaway argument?
> > { ....
> > ! Paragraph ended before \Letter was complete.
> >
> > Is there a solution to this?
>
> Yes. Use
>
> \long\def
>
> to define \Letter, or define an environment
>
> \startletter \stopletter
>
> (for instance with \definestartstop) to do the job.

Thank you, that helped a lot. Especially because I didn't know about
\definestartstop as it is not in cont-eni.pdf (via google I found it in
several other pdf files)

-- 
Wybo

Re: \par in command argument

[Wybo Dekker]

On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Wybo Dekker wrote:

> I'm trying to write a letter style so that I can say:
>
> \input letter.sty
> \Address{name\\street\\city}
> % ... define several other things...
> \Letter{
> Dear John,
>
> ....
>
> Love, Mary
> }
>
> But the paragraphs in \Letter's argument cause trouble:

I found the solution already: I had to use \long\def instead of \def.
But that introduced another problem: \startlines...\stoplines doesn't work
anymore, for example:

\def\Letter#1{#1}
\starttext
  \Letter{
    \startlines
      abc  % these appear
      def  % on a
      ghi  % single line
    \stoplines
  }
\stoptext

-- 
Wybo

Re: \par in command argument

[John Culleton]

On Wednesday 04 September 2002 06:01 am, Wybo Dekker wrote:
> I'm trying to write a letter style so that I can say:
>
> \input letter.sty
> \Address{name\\street\\city}
> % ... define several other things...
> \Letter{
> Dear John,
>
> ....
>
> Love, Mary
> }
>
> But the paragraphs in \Letter's argument cause trouble:
>
> This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
> (./t.tex
> Runaway argument?
> { ....
> ! Paragraph ended before \Letter was complete.
>
> Is there a solution to this?

I used the textmerg macro pretty much as is and had success with 
creating form letters. See my earlier correspondence under the title
"Textmerg and Context."

Hans Hagen offered workarounds for the few small problems I 
encountered.

It isn't necessary to reinvent the wheel in this case.  Textmerg.tex 
works and I suspect the ancient letterformat.tex could be made to 
work. The secret is several related macros and not one 
all-encompassing macro call. 

HTH

John Culleton