[XeTeX] A "box" in the bottom-left corner of the first page

[Jonathan Kew]

On 1 May 2007, at 9:45 am, Székely Gábor Balázs wrote:
>
> We often have special letters (in Italian as well as in
> Hungarian). One of their speciality is that the recipient's address
> _always_ must go on the first page of the letter, in the bottom-left
> corner and with a line above it the length of which corresponds to
> the length of the longest line of the address. Of course the address
> can't be split and there should be some vertical space above the line
> where the text of the letter starts (or, in this case, ends on that
> page), and some space below the line so that it doesn't stick to the
> address.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{letter}

\usepackage{fontspec,xunicode,xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Adobe Garamond Pro}

\usepackage{float}
\newfloat{recipient}{b}{}

\signature{Jonathan}
\address{Bachotek\\Poland\\(temporarily)}

\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{}

\begin{recipient}
% this is a very crude approach;
% there's probably a package to do it more elegantly,
% or to reformat the second parameter of \begin{letter}
\vbox{
  \hrule
  \vskip5pt
  \hbox{Gábor Székely}
  \hbox{Somewhere}
  \hbox{in}
  \hbox{Hungary}
}
\end{recipient}

\opening{Dear Gábor,}

Sounds like you could use a float to do this, with the \texttt{b}  
placement code
so that it is positioned at the bottom of the page.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a package that does  
something like this.
This is just a quick-and-dirty sample to show the basic idea.

\closing{Hope this helps,}

\cc{\XeTeX\ mailing list}
\vfill

\end{letter}
\end{document}