[texhax] question

[doug waud]

Hi

Zbigniew Nitecki wrote:
> I was trying to write to find out if there is any mutual-help "chat" 
> network on TeX, but perhaps you are the people I should be contacting.

Well, if this response does the trick ....    :-)

> I occasionally come up with problems I can't figure out, and would like 
> a resource to turn to for help.  (I am a member of TUG)
> Here is my current problem.  I am trying to generate a short vita, using 
> the attached files, of which shortvita.tex is the "master file".  For 
> lack of a better document class, I am using "letter" (is there a better 
> one?)

See below

> and am apparently running into some silly problem with this class, 
> but I cannot find any documentation on the letter documentclass---in the 
> Latex Companion or other latex manuals I have access to.  Is the problem 
> obvious to you?
> Here is my error message:
> 
>> Runaway argument?
>> -{\@firstoftwo {\nobreak \@xcentercr }}\def \reserved at b {\@xcentercr 
>> \ETC.
>> ! Paragraph ended before \@no at pgbk was complete.
>> <to be read again>
>>                    \par
>> l.33 \end{letter}
>>
>> ? (./shortvitals.tex) (./shortpub.tex 
>> [1{/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts
>> /map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}]) [2]
>> ! Argument of \@no at pgbk has an extra }.
>> <inserted text>
>>                 \par
>> l.33 \end{letter}
> 
> and the relevant files are attached.

That was a good start.

I ran LaTeX on the main file and got your error message. I then 
commented out the calls to the two subfiles and still got it.

I then wondered what the \begin and \end{letter} were doing, commented 
them out and it ran fine.

As to choice of letter class, I would have picked article as my default.
I changed that option and again all went fine. The first page of the dvi 
file shifted a bit (I suspect because the Dear X etc of a letter were 
not present) but otherwise looked ok to a rough inspection.

So, try dropping the \begin{letter} and \end{letter} calls and see if 
you like the end result. For comparision, change the \documentclass to 
article and inspect again.

Hope this sorts it out.

doug

PS The topic of the last bib item caught my eye and I went back to see 
what your area of interest was. Nowhere on page one could I find any 
specific indication of discipline (I did find math when I looked back at 
your .signature file). Might it not be a good idea to include this in 
the cv (even if it is to be "short")?