# Spruce - A tool for building CVs

## Overview

Spruce is a tool that generates a PDF document from a CV written in JSON.
The PDF generation is completed in two steps:

1. The application parses the JSON document and generates a TEX file using the TEX template files located in the [templates](./templates) directory.
2. The application then uses ConTeXt to generate the final PDF document from the generated TEX file.

## Dependencies

If you are interested in generating your own CV, then below is a list of dependencies that you'll need to install:

- **Go:** Please go [here](https://go.dev/dl/) to download the latest version of the Go programming language.
- **ConTeXt:** You can go to the [installation page](https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Installation) to find out how to install ConTeXt for your Operating System.
- **The Carlito font (ttf-carlito):** A free, metric compatible alternative to the Calibri.
  - For Ubuntu/Debian installation you can use `apt`:
    ```bash
    $ apt install font-crosextra-carlito
    ```
  - For Arch Linux you can use `pacman`:
    ```bash
    $ pacman -S ttf-carlito
    ```
  - Alternatively you can download the font from https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/carlito
  - Once this font is installed you'll need to update ConTeXt so it can find the font when generating the PDF:
    ```bash
    $ OSFONTDIR=/usr/share/fonts
    $ mtxrun --script fonts --reload
    ```

## Generating the example PDF Document

You can generate a PDF from the example CV by running the following command:

```bash
$ go run . --input example/cv.json
```

This will create a file called `cv.pdf` which you can view in your favourite PDF viewer.

## Inspirations

- [The Markdown Resume](https://mszep.github.io/pandoc_resume/) - This project uses ConTeXt and pandoc to convert Markdown based CVs into multiple formats including PDF, HTML and DOCX. This is where I discovered ConTeXt.
- [melkir/resume](https://github.com/melkir/resume/tree/master) - This project generates CVs using Go and LaTeX.