Calendars and Miscellaneous ⇒ calendar package how-to

[malgoska]

Hello all,
I've been trying to use an old calendar package downloaded from here:
https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/lat ... ar?lang=en
and now I'm not sure how to use it. I've installed it (run allcal.ins) and was able to compile several demo files (e.g. demowkly.tex). As far as I understand one edits his own calendar events inside caldemos.dtx file, but how should I run it? Compiling with pdflatex and latex gives no output, compiling with just tex gives an error about ltxdoc documentclass. Any guidance will be appreciated (I'm using Miktex 2.9 on Windows 10, if it helps).

[Ijon Tichy]

You don't need to edit caldemos.dtx. Extract all files using allcal.ins and then either use (a renamed copy of) one of the demo files as a template or create your own document. See the manual for more information. You can create a PDF of the manual using: pdflatex calguide.tex

Disclaimer: I never used the package, so I cannot answer detailed questions about the package, but only give the general information above.

BTW: The package is not part of TeX distributions because it is not free enough. And it is very old. There are more modern calendar packages like tikz-kalender (Kalender is the German word for calendar).

[malgoska]

The thing is that the demo files do not contain any information, they look like:

Code: Select all

%%
%% This is file `demowkly.tex',
%% generated with the docstrip utility.
%%
%% The original source files were:
%%
%% caldemos.dtx  (with options: `weekly')
%% 
\documentclass[a4paper]{weekly}
\begin{document}
\begin{weekly}
 {}
 {demolist,demoaptr,demoevtr}
 january 1 1997 to january 3 1997
\end{weekly}
\end{document}

%% 
%%
%% End of file `demowkly.tex'.

so I believe it's dtx file is the key. I understand that this is a really old package, but using it was tempting, as the output looks very nice. Nevertheless I'll give a tikz-kalendar package a try.
Thanks!

[Ijon Tichy]

Do you want to write a new class or use a document that uses an existing class?

If you just want to use an existing class/package, you have to write a tex document. If you want to write a new class/package with documentation, writing a new dtx file would be a good idea but not a must. dtx files are the sources and implementation documentation (and oft also the manuals and demo files) of LaTeX packages and classes. Read the docstrip manual for more information about dtx and ins files. Only class and package authors need to edit them. Users use the unpacked classes and packages.