# `jwjournal`, a personal LaTeX class for writing journals ## Introduction A typical journal entry produced by `jwjournal` looks like this:  Codewise, it is as simple as below: ``` 2023-01-01 Sunny --- Botanical Garden Today I visited the botanical garden! [Food] And had ice-cream for lunch! ``` > It is also possible to write the date as `2023/01/01`. > With the options `month-day-year` or `day-month-year`, you can also write date in the format `mm-dd-yyyy` or `dd-mm-yyyy`, respectively. You may refer to the English and French demo documents for examples. Every day of the week has its unique color, like this:  By the way, the conversion from plain date string like `2023-01-01` to natural language like `January 1, 2023 | Sunday` is done automatically by `jwjournal` and has multilingual support. Thus, for example (via `\UseLanguage`): - Chinese:  - French:  - German:  - Japanese:  - Spanish:  - ... and more... ## Usage The structure of the document is very simple: ```latex \documentclass[11pt, paperstyle=light yellow, color entry]{jwjournal} \begin{document} % Your journal \end{document} ``` The options are: - `month-day-year` or `day-month-year` for other date format - `paperstyle = ...` adjusts the paper color, options include: lightyellow、yellow、parchment、green、lightgray、gray、nord、dark... - `color entry` adds more color to the title of each entry - `scroll` turns on the scroll mode and can generate a single-page pdf similar to a long screenshot And there are only two major syntaxes for the main text: 1) Title - Any line begins with date like `2023-01-01` would be regard as the Title line. - You may write the weather and/or location after the date. - Example: ``` 2023-01-01 Sunny --- Apartment ``` 2) Note - Any line begins with something like `[Note]` would be regard as the Note line. - Example: ``` [Note] In hindsight, it was the right decision. ``` With a few more for icing on the cake: - `+++`: If a single sentence or a few words fall to the next page, you may write a `+++` before that entry to enlarge the current page by one line. - `===`: Three or more equal signs `=` would simply be ignored. This is for improving the readability of the code, allowing you to write your journal like: ``` 2023-01-01 Sunny --- Botanical Garden ===================================== Today I visited the botanical garden! [Food] And had ice-cream for lunch! ``` > You may also refer to the demo documents to see their behaviors in action. Indentations are not important, but paragraphs need to be separated by a blank line. For the sake of readability, it is recommended to organize your text as one of the following ways: - with indentation: ``` 2023-01-01 Sunny ...... ...... ``` - with a separation line: ``` 2023-01-01 Sunny ================ ...... ...... ``` - or maybe even: ``` ========== 2023-01-01 Sunny ========== ...... ...... ``` ## TeXnical details ### Engines and base classes - With pdfLaTeX, the base class is `minimart`. - With XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, the base class is `einfart`. ### Colors The colors from Monday to Sunday have the internal names `jwjournal-color-1`, ..., `jwjournal-color-7`. Currently they are defined as: ```latex \colorlet { jwjournal-color-1 } { yellow!50!green } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-2 } { yellow!70!orange } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-3 } { cyan!70!blue } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-4 } { violet } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-5 } { yellow!40!cyan } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-6 } { yellow!20!orange } \colorlet { jwjournal-color-7 } { red!20!orange } ``` ### Functionality The main features are achieved with the power of LaTeX3's regex functionality. It scans the content paragraph by paragraph and converts recognized patterns into corresponding TeX commands. Thus, `2023-01-01 Weather` becomes `\JWJournalEntry{2023-01-01}{Weather}`, `[Note] ...` becomes `\item[Note] ...` inside a `description` environment, and `+++` is essentially `\enlargethispage*{\baselineskip}`, etc. However, this comes with a price: in order to scan the content, it is firstly stored in a macro `\g_jwjournal_content_tl`, and that means that you cannot use commands like `\verb` in your main text (unless explicitly `\end{jwjournal}`, write your code, and then `\begin{jwjournal}`). ### Dates The conversion of date string to natural language, and the calculation of the day of the week are accomplished by `projlib-date`, part of the `ProjLib` toolkit, which is still at its early stage, in some aspects not as functional as existing package such as `datenumber`, but should evolve through time. ### Language and date format Language and date format can both be set in two ways: as class option or with corresponding commands. - The user-level command for setting language is `\UseLanguage`, provided by `projlib-language`; the one for setting date format is `\SetDatetimeInputFormat`, provided by `projlib-date`. - When you set the language, it is not exactly the same using class option or using command: when you select a language via class option, only the setting for this language would be loaded; however, with `\UseLanguage`, it would load *all* the language settings and then switch to your selected one. Sometimes the page breaking behavior differs slightly. Personally I prefer the `\UseLanguage` approach, for this would allow you to switch language in the middle of your document. ### Scroll mode The scroll mode is achieved by directly accessing `\pdfpageheight` (pdfTeX and XeTeX) or `\pageheight` (LuaTeX). The minimal page height is set to be `10in`. It is worth noting that in order to calculate the height needed, the entire content are put into a single box, which puts a limitation on the length of your document (but this usually wouldn't be a problem). # License This work is released under the LaTeX Project Public License, v1.3c or later.