LetterWorks User's Manual

October 2002

Table of Contents

An Introduction to LetterWorks

Feature Overview

Tasks

Stationery Documents

Creating a Stationery from a PDF Document

About the Stationery Inspector

Using Text Frames in a Stationery

About Text Template Variables

The Different Types of Text Template Variables

Adding Text Template Variables to a Stationery

Saving a Stationery for use with new Letter Documents

Letter Documents

Creating Letters from Stationeries

About vCards

Using vCards with Text Templates

Preferences

General

License

Printing

How to get good results

An Introduction to LetterWorks

LetterWorks is a Mac OS X application for writing letters and general correspondence for both private and office use. It is aimed to be easy to use and still powerful in its domain. While LetterWorks has many features commonly found in general text processors, it only includes those which are needed to write high quality letters.

Apart from its ease of use, the two key features are:

1. Support for digital stationeries, i.e. a prepared background with text and graphics that comprises of your corporate or personal design. You can print your letter on stock plain white paper!

2. Integration with address management applications like Apple's Address Book application and standard vCard files to fill in the receiver's address quickly using drag & drop.

It was specifically designed with and for Apples new, modern Mac OS X operating system and leverages many new technologies found in there.

Feature Overview

•  Automatically fills in address data via templates
•  Generates letters from stationeries containing predefined texts and address templates
•  Works with Drag & Drop
•  Works with the Apple AddressBook and standard vCards
•  Fully native Mac OS X look & feel
•  Predefined stationeries with generic letterheads for instant use or customization included
•  True What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG)
•  Extensive undo support
•  Localized in several languages
•  Spell checking in several languages
•  Rich text fomatting capabilites
•  Flexible layout editing with frames
•  Inline graphics support
•  Custom stationery support
•  No need for pre-printed letterheads
•  High quality output with pdf
•  Support for language pecularities

Tasks

Stationery Documents

Stationery documents provide the design and layout of letters. They can easily be created from a PDF document (optional) and text frames. The following sections show how to create high quality stationeries.
Stationery documents may have one or more pages. The pages are used by letter documents that are based on the stationery in the following way: Use the first page of the stationery for the first page of the document and the second one for the second page and so on. The last page of the stationery is repeated for all following pages of the letter document when the letter document contains more pages than the stationery document. To illustrate this here is a simple example:
A business letter has a special first page with address information and a big logo of a company. The following pages (page 2 and further) don't have the address information and the big logo. A stationery document therefore would consist of two pages. The first with a address field and the big logo and a second page without the address field and the big logo. This way the second page and the following pages of the letter document would get the look of the second page of the stationery document.

Creating a Stationery from a PDF Document

When you create a stationery from a PDF document, it define the background (look) and dimensions (e.g. US letter or DIN A4) of the stationery and thus the documents created with it.

If the PDF document contains e.g. two pages, the first page defines the look of the first page of your letters and the last one all the other pages.

A typical workflow looks like this:

a) Create a PDF that resembles the design and dimensions of the stationery to build. The last page of your PDF is used as the background of all letter pages after the last stationery page. Commonly you supply two pages with your PDF: Page one for the first and page two for all other pages.

b) Open a new document in LetterWorks. Switch to Layout Mode from the Format menu.

c) Drag the PDF document into the new LetterWorks document window (alternatively, use the Menu per Choose Background..., again from the Format menu).

d) Add and adjust the existing text frames as necessary (see below).

About the Stationery Inspector

The stationery inspector helps to create text frames and text template variables in a stationery. It comprises of the inspector window that is shown in layout mode by default. If you closed it, you can show it again using the Toggle Inspector menu entry.

Using Text Frames in a Stationery

Text frames provide areas in the document to type in text. While they are empty when being created, you should add texts, graphics and text templates (see next section) which will be visible when a new letter is created using such a stationery.
There are two types of text frames in LetterWorks. Fixed text frames and flow text frames. Fixed text frames may span one page at maximum. Flow text frames cause a new page to be added if the text input to it doesn't fit on the current page. One can have at most one flow text frame and an arbitrary amount of fixed frames. 

To make this clearer a short example. A letter stationery should be created. One flow text frame is used for the main content text. Fixed text frames are used for the addresses, the subject and the reference line. Page numbers are also put into fixed text frames.

A typical workflow for defining the text frames for a new stationery looks like this:

a) Upon creating a new stationery document the flow text frame is already in place. It is the only frame visible. One can delete it if desired (select the frame and hit the delete key) or move it to the desired position (see d) below for accurate positioning of text frames).

b) Fixed text frames can be added by simply clicking and dragging on the document. By using the control knobs one can manipulate the size, by dragging the frame border one can move the frame to a different position. The arrow keys can be used for pixelwise movement (see d) below for accurate positioning of text frames).

c) Predefine the contents of text frames by typing text, pasting graphics or adding text template variables (see below).

d) Text frame size and position fine tuning is done with the help of the stationery inspector. Select a text frame by clicking on the border and adjust the values for size and position in the stationery inspector window.

About Text Template Variables

Text Template Variables are placeholders within text frames of stationeries. They are replaced in letter documents with actual content. Text template variables can be used for page numbering, the current date and address information. The replacement with actual content takes place as soon as the replacement is known to LetterWorks. That is the page numbering and the date when opening a new letter document from the stationery (or switching off Layout mode).

The Different Types of Text Template Variables

Different types of text template variables exist:

a) Receiver Variables: They define places where receiver information should go. Receiver information is e.g. address information of the receiver of the letter. They are used by utilizing vCards (either by dropping them onto the document or by manual entry).

b) Sender/Me Variables: They define places where sender information should go. This information is derived by the address book's "Me" information. The preferences panel lets you choose what kind of address (work/home) should be used.

c) Document Variables: They define places where document specific information should go. This is for example the current page number or the current total page count of the whole document.

d) Miscellaneous Variables: They define places where e.g. date information should go.

Adding Text Template Variables to a Stationery

To add text template variables to a stationery the stationery inspector is used. Every time text input in a frame is possible it shows a list of all available text template variables. 

A typical workflow inserting text template variables is as follows:

a) In a stationery's text frame place the text insertion cursor to the place the text template variable should be inserted.

b) Choose a text template variable from the stationery inspector and double click it.

c) The double clicked text template variable is inserted at the current text input cursor location.

Text template variables can be used alongside with normal text.

Saving a Stationery for use with new Letter Documents

To use a newly created (or modified) stationery for new letter documents it has to be saved. 

Saving the stationery is done by the Save as Stationery entry from the File menu. To have the stationery available in the New with Stationery... menu the default folder has to be used. But it is also OK to save the stationery at an arbitrary place (thus losing the quick new with stationery shortcut).

Letter Documents

Creating Letters from Stationeries

New letter documents are created by choosing a stationery (which defines the look of the letter). Either one of the default templates can be chosen or alternatively an other one. 

A typical workflow is as follows:

a) Chose the menu entry New with Stationery from the File menu. The submenu shows a number of choices (default stationeries) and the option to use an Other... .

b) If a default stationery is selected a window with a new letter document with the look of the chosen stationery is opened. Otherwise a file selector comes up to allow the selection of an arbitrary stationery. After the selection of a stationery file a letter document with the look of the chosen stationery is opened.

About vCards

vCards are a standardized format for exchanging personal and address information. They can be used for easy input of address information into LetterWorks letter documents.

Using vCards with Text Templates

vCards can be used to replace address text template variables with actual address information. A letter document based on such a stationery is able to accept vCard files (either via drag & drop (e.g. from the address book application) or via file selector (menu entry Fill from vCard... from the Templates menu. In addition of vCard files the address text template variables can also be replaced manually. 

A typical workflow looks like this:

a) Dragging of a vCard into the letter document (which contains address text template variables). Continue with step d).

b) Choosing the menu entry Fill from vCard... from the Templates menu. Selection of a vCard file. Continue with step d).

c) Choosing the menu entry Fill manually... from the Templates menu. Continue with step d.)

d) A sheet appears containing the address information known so far (information of the vCard if given). The address information can be modified. Red labels indicate that the fields are used in the letter document (the letter contains corresponding text template variables). If red labeled information is not provided the corresponding text template variables will be removed without any text replacement. After hitting the OK Button, the address text template variables are replaced with the information of the sheet.

Preferences

General

The General Preferences Pane controls the basic behavior of LetterWorks. 

It can be defined which stationery to use as the default stationery. The default stationery is the one which appears after issuing the New command (e.g. Command-N).

The general choice if spell checking should happen while typing can be made in the next section of the general preferences. Note that it is possible to specify a different spelling behavior on a per document basis.

To let LetterWorks know what address to prefer when using sender/me template variables one can choose one of the addresses shown in the popup. Usually one can choose between work and home address.

License

The License Preferences Panel lets you enter a LetterWorks license. If you like LetterWorks please buy a license and enter it in this panel. Enter your name (exactly as you entered it when buying the license) and your license code. You are immediately able to check if the license is entered correctly by looking at the text under License. This panel sports a link to the LetterWorks shop for buying a license.

Printing

How to get good results

In order to get good results with ink-jet printers please consider to use premium ink-jet paper, good ink cartridges and make sure that the print options (in the print dialog) are set to best quality. Otherwise you may encounter suboptimal print output.