Letter Format Template

This is a Quarto template that assists you in creating a manuscript using the letter format.

Creating a New Letter

You can use this as a template to create a letter. To do this, use the following command:

quarto use template mcanouil/quarto-letter@1.2.0

This will install the extension and create an example qmd file and bibliography that you can use as a starting place for your article.

Installation For Existing Document

You may also use this format with an existing Quarto project or document. From the quarto project or document directory, run the following command to install this format:

quarto add mcanouil/quarto-letter@1.2.0

Usage

To use the format, you can use the format name letter-pdf¹. For example:

quarto render template.qmd --to letter-pdf

or in your document yaml

format: letter-pdf

Configuration

Option	Type	Default	Description
address	array	(required)	Recipient address lines. The render logs an error if missing or empty.
subject	string		Letter subject line.
subject-title	string	Subject	Label preceding the subject line.
subject-suffix	string	:	Character appended after the subject title.
opening	string		Opening salutation.
closing	string		Closing salutation.
cc	array		Carbon copy recipients.
encl	array		List of enclosures.
ps	string		Postscript text appended after the closing.
header-image	string		Path to a letterhead image inserted above the opening salutation.
header-image-width	string	\textwidth	LaTeX width for the letterhead image (e.g. 0.5\textwidth, 8cm).
signature-image	string		Path to a signature image inserted between the closing salutation and the printed name (digital signature).
signature-image-width	string	4cm	LaTeX width for the signature image (e.g. 4cm, 0.3\textwidth).

Bilingual Variants

It is possible to change the subject title and the subject suffix, e.g., for a French letter:

format:
  letter-pdf:
    subject-title: Objet
    subject-suffix: " :"

The extension ships matching code snippets (meta for English, meta-fr for French, meta-sig for a letter with a signature image) that can be triggered in editors with Quarto IDE integration.

Letterhead and Signature Images

To include a letterhead and a digital signature image:

format:
  letter-pdf:
    header-image: letterhead.png
    header-image-width: "0.5\\textwidth"
    signature-image: signature.png
    signature-image-width: 4cm

Note

Width values are passed through to \includegraphics, so any LaTeX dimension is accepted (e.g. 4cm, 0.5\textwidth, 120pt). Use double backslashes in YAML double-quoted strings ("0.5\\textwidth") so the literal backslash is preserved.

Validation and Warnings

The extension emits prefixed diagnostics during rendering:

• An error when the required address field is missing or empty.
• A warning when subject-title is set but subject is empty.
• A warning when subject or subject-title contains raw HTML tokens (e.g. <x>), which Pandoc strips from LaTeX output.

You can view a preview of the rendered template at https://m.canouil.dev/quarto-letter/index.pdf.

Footnotes

1. Currently only PDF is supported but HTML support will be added as soon as Paged.js is made available in Quarto. ↩