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<!-- Copyright (C) 2023 by Jinwen XU -->

# `jwjournal`, a personal LaTeX class for writing journals

## Introduction

A typical journal entry produced by `jwjournal` looks like this:
![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo1.png)

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:
![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo2.png)

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: ![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo3-cn.png)
- French: ![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo3-fr.png)
- German: ![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo3-de.png)
- Japanese: ![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo3-jp.png)
- Spanish: ![image](https://github.com/Jinwen-XU/jwjournal/raw/main/screenshots/demo3-es.png)
- ... 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.