How to do decomposition properly in (La)TeX

Question

First of all I think I need to apologize for the uninitiated beginner question as I suspect I might want LaTeX to do something weird, but anyway here goes. Also I might not be using terms and names appropriate to LaTeX specifically so bear with me.

I am a senior developer with several years of experience in both backend and frontend.

I thought it would be a nice idea to get into LaTeX while writing my CV in it. I found Overleaf and thought I would use that for my trials.

I did try some basic examples, but immediately tried to investigate some best practices/recommended ways of structuring the documents and possibly create some abstractions/reusable parts.

TLDR: I want the main document to possibly only contain usages of named "macros" (created by me to match the sections of the CV) with parameter values (Name, email, job name, description, year from/to, etc.). Ideally the main document would not contain (m)any low-level TeX commands.

Here's what I wanted to achieve for my CV document:

• create reusable defined styles to use throughout the document
• create "macros"/"functions" for (repeating) sections of the document so the main document could be as simple/clean as possible, allowing me to add/change stuff easily (I want good decomposition and maintainability, clean code)
• regarding styling I think I am maybe wrongly clinging to the HTML/CSS analogy and looking for something similar in LaTeX

In the end I got frustrated and wrote my CV in Scribus. I still find it compelling to try the TeX way, but I am not sure if what I want is possible.

I was convinced something like this had to be possible in LaTeX and I am not lazy to read manuals, but maybe I didn't google the right things. If you can kindly refer me to some appropriate documentation I can read up on my own. Thanx

Answer 1

It sounds like you might like to create your own .cls file, say jakub.cls

jakub.cls

\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}
\ProvidesClass{jakub}[2024/09/05 (Jakub, all rights reserved)]

% switch for option 1
\newif\ifoption@i
\option@ifalse

\DeclareOption{option1}{%
  \typeout{Jakub's class, option 1 specified!}
\option@ifalse}

\ProcessOptions\relax
\LoadClass[11pt]{article}

\newcommand{\jakubsfirstcommand}{Jakub's class}
\endinput

which you can then use as follows, for example

\documentclass{jakub}

\begin{document}

\jakubsfirstcommand
\end{document}

Or, using the optional argument

\documentclass[option1]{jakub}

\begin{document}

\jakubsfirstcommand
\end{document}

Perhaps Where do I place my own .sty or .cls files, to make them available to all my .tex files? will be helpful as to where this might live.

---

Alternatively, you might like to use a style file instead, say jakub.sty

jakub.sty

\ProvidesPackage{jakub}[2024/09/05 (Jakub, all rights reserved)]

% switch for option 1
\newif\ifoption@i
\option@ifalse

\DeclareOption{option1}{%
  \typeout{Jakub's style file, option 1 specified!}
\option@ifalse}

\ProcessOptions\relax
\newcommand{\jakubsfirstcommand}{Jakub's style}
\endinput

which you can use as

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[option1]{jakub}

\begin{document}

\jakubsfirstcommand
\end{document}