The LaTeX package contract

Copyright © 2007–2024 Markus Kohm

Release: 2024-02-07 v0.91

License: LPPL 1.3c

KOMA presents the KOMA-Script spin-off contract. Package contract provides environments for legal contracts, sections, paragraphs and similar. It is the official successor to the former KOMA-Script package scrjura.

This work may be distributed and/or modified under the conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3c of the license. The latest version of this license is in http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt and version 1.3c or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX version 2005/12/01 or later.

The Current Maintainer and author of this work is Markus Kohm.

This work consists of the files listed in MANIFEST.md.

Abstract

For several years KOMA-Script provides package scrjura. The package was developed at the request of and in co-operation with a German lawyer. In 2024, the package was separated from KOMA-Script and has since been called contract. The new name was chosen to avoid confusion with KOMA-Script packages. Secondly, it better reflects the purpose of the package.

Installation for Users

If you are a user, I would usually say, that you should wait until the package has been added to your preferred TeX distribution. Then you can use the package manager of your TeX distribution to install the package. But in case of contract it currently seems, that it could not be uploaded to CTAN and therefore will never be part of any TeX distribution. So if you would like to use the package, you would need to

• [Download the current

release](https://github.com/komascript/latex-contract/releases) You can either use the file named “Source code (zip)” or the file “Source code (tar.gz)”. Windows users are recommended to use the zip. By downloading the file you will get something like latex-contract-0.91.zip resp. latex-contract-0.91.tar.gz.

• Unpack the downloaded file

The downloaded file is an archive, that contains several files. Despite the Windows File Explorer and also Mac-OS, KDE's Dolphin, Gnome's Nautilus and many other file managers are able to open such archive files, you should instead right-click on it to extract it. I recommend to keep the directory structure while extracting. This gives a new directory latex-contract-<version>, e.g., latex-contract-0.91.

• Open a shell/terminal in the new directory latex-contract-<version>.

• Use l3build to install the package and the documentation:

    l3build install --full

If you don't get an error message, the installation was successful and you should be able to use LaTeX package contract. To test, that LaTeX is able to find the file, try:

kpsewhich contract.sty

This should show you the whole path of the LaTeX package file.

Note: The installation above is currently tested only with TeX Live. MiKTeX users may also need to run the MiKTeX Console to update the filename database. See the MiKTeX manual for more information.

Note: The installation described above, does not work for a snapshot archive or a git clone of the main branch. It only works for the release branch resp. a release download. For installation of a snapshot or git clone of the main branch see “Unpacking and Installation for Developers” below. For some reasons it also does not work for release v0.9. If you need to use release v0.9 see “Unpacking and Installation for Developers”.

Unpacking for Distributors

Distributors should download the current release. See MANIFEST.md for information about the files, that build the distribution.

If distributors also want to distribute contract.sty, they can unpack it using:

tex contract.dtx

For a temporary local installation see “Installation for Users” above.

Unpacking and Installation for Developers

Developers who want the current developer version of the code to be installed for testing, should clone the latex-contract repository, e.g., using

git clone https://github.com/komascript/latex-contract.git

You can than unpack and install contract using:

l3build install

from within the main directory of the cloned respository.

Important Note: The user manual of contract uses some packages, which are still under development and therefore currently may not be available on CTAN. So you usually cannot use l3build doc to generate the documentation or l3build install --full to install contract with the documentation. Instead you either have to read contract.dtx or use the contract.pdf available at the newest contract release or the release branch. You can copy such PDFs to the doc/latex/contract/ folder of any TEXMF tree.

How to get the Manual

After installation of contract and the user manual you can use:

texdoc contract

Without installation you can get contract.pdf as part of the corresponding contract release or the release branch.

How to Contribute

To become a contributor, e.g., do heavy testing. If you find an issue, please report it. You can also become a developer and, e.g., make new test files to the packageP. See the l3build manual for more information about tests. If you've created a new test and think that it would be useful, please either do a pull request or add a new issue and include your test file.

If you would like to have the package on CTAN and also in TeX distributions, you can become the CTAN release agent of latex-contract. To do this, however, you must first convince the CTAN team that contract is a suitable, not too generic name for a new LaTeX package. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this. Queries to me about this and about possible renaming of the package are undesirable and risk further stalling the development of this LaTeX package and all my other LaTeX packages.

How to Report Issues

If you think you have found a bug (or another kind of issue) using contract you should use the issue tracker. Please first search for similar issues already reported and maybe also already fixed and closed. Maybe the replies to such a similar report would help you too.

If your issue is new, you should report it also using the issue tracker. Please be kind, not only when writing the report but also when reading replies and commenting or answering. And please always add a minimal working example and usually the relevant parts of the log-file to your report. Please use the markdown for code to add such files into the text of your report. The correct language identifier for LaTeX code would be latex. For log-files you won't need any language identifier. Usually you should not use attachments for code or log-files unless you've been asked to do so. And please note, reports should always be self-containing. External links often break and so the report become useles.

How to Say Thank You for my Work

Hey, I'm doing this as a hobby. So no need to say thank you. But I'm a vain fop, so I'm certainly up for a quick thank you by email. On komascript.de you can find an explanation of my wishes if you want to give more. If you don't understand German, just click to links at that page.

Milestones

The development has just begun. Currently the first milestone:

• x creating a new repository
• x copying scrjura.dtx from KOMA-Script as contract.dtx to the new repository
• x creating a new build environment:
  • x README.md
  • x LICENSE.md
  • x MANIFEST.md
  • x build.lua
  • x test files
• x renaming several internals of contract
• x adding user documentation based on the scrjura chapters of the English KOMA-Script manual
• x improving user documentation

has been reached.

Further milestones could be:

• replacing scrjura by a contract wrapper in KOMA-Script for compatibility only
• reimplementing several internals of contract:
  • replacing KOMA-Script options by LaTeX key-value options
  • replacing newkomafont, setkomafont by something not KOMA-Script related or alterntively internally uses scrkbase by scrextend,
  • using expl3,
  • using the new paragraph hooks of LaTeX,
  • using the extended referencing mechanism of LaTeX.

From scrjura to contract

If you have been using the scrjura package and are now switching to the contract package, you should read chapter “From scrjura to contract” in the contract user manual. The most important and incompatible change IMHO is, that the argument of \Clause and \SubClause isn't mandaroty any longer but optional. So the syntax has changed to \Clause[<options>] resp. \SubClause[<options>].

Note: For a transitional period, KOMA-Script will continue to contain a package scrjura, which is a wrapper to contract and attempts to increase compatibility. With this package, the argument of \Clause and \SubClause will remain mandatory for the time being. However, this package is expected to disappear from KOMA-Script after a reasonable period of smooth transition.