[SSebeny]

Hi All,

I have some data (like a csv file) consisting of lines each with a first name, last name, username, etc. And I want to merge this data into letters. So the letter is like a form letter and I want to get the names merged into appropriate spots in the letter. More specifically, it is a one page letter and I want another copy of the letter for each user (each line of the csv file). Furthermore, the end result should ideally be one file -- one continuous file that has all the letters together so I can print it easily (this preferrably PDF). I know I can just use MS Word for this, but I want to create a process that I can initiate and run from the command line so that I can put it in a script to run repeatedly when the data changes or I have new data. Can anyone give any suggestions or pointers how I can accomplish this from the command line.

[Krauti]

You might want to look into teTeX (or any other TeX distribution for that matter). It's a command-line-driven typesetting system which will produce excellent pdfs from text input (it's a kind of markup language, like html or xml).

So if you produce a basic script that puts the names from a list into a prewritten text with the proper laTeX formattings, you'll have what you want.