Curriculust - CV generator

Write your curriculum/resume in YAML files, and convert those to a PDF based on a LaTeX template. The YAML->LaTeX converter is written in Rust, while the LaTeX->PDF conversion can be done e.g. with pdflatex.

Advantages

Writing a CV in YAML allows you to:

• version control the data (e.g. with git), getting access to history
• separate the style from the data
• try out different styles without changing the data
• easily disable, reorder and change the text length of single sections and items with saveable configurations
• built-in multilanguage support in the same file and in single text fields, along with a dictionary for common words
• reuse the same data for other purposes, e.g. to build a website, if you ever needed to (the Rust package is easily extendable)

Comparison

	version controllable	separate style	try different styles	configs	multilanguage	reusability
Web services e.g. Europass	❌	✔️	✔️	❌	🟡	❌
Bare LaTeX	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	🟡	❌
Curriculust	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️

Additional features

With the --check-links option the Rust converter will make a GET request to all of the links present in the document, to make sure they all work.

YAML file structure

Text fields support basic Markdown, so you can insert links, lists and put emphasis on things.

Take a look a the example/ folder for an actual example of the rules explained below.

Text field attributes

All text fields in the YAML files support attributes to specify the locale (e.g. en, it) and the display mode (e.g. short, long) with this syntax: fieldname-attribute1-attribute2 (e.g. institution-en-short). In case there are multiple alternatives for the same text field, the one whose attributes best match the currently active attributes is chosen.

To specify the currently active attributes, you can use locale, display in various parts of the YAML files. Moreover you can customize order and visibility. If you use locale, display, order, visibility with a string (e.g. display: long) you set the attribute in general, but you can also set it for some particular item id (e.g. display: { _: long, high-school-item: short } displays everything in long form except for high school).

Including other files

Fields with nested sub-fields (e.g. section-education) can be put in separate files by prepending the field name with include-. All include- parts support the following fields:

• file (required): the file to include
• active attribute specifiers: locale, display, order, visibility to apply to the included file

Fields structure

The root YAML file can contain the following fields. * fields are required, but if you don't want anything there just use "".

• active attribute specifiers: locale, display, order, visibility to apply from the point they are encountered
• dictionary is a dictionary of key-value pairs (attributes are supported on keys)
• header contains name*, career, email, phone, location, website, github, linkedin and:
  • summary and skills, which contain title* (the title of the section) and summary*/skills*

These fields specify section of different types. They all have a title*, a description, and items (a list). The sub-fields in the list below are to be intended as children of items:

• section-education: degree*, institution*, when*, grade, details
• section-award: name*, when*, grade
• section-job: role*, company*, where*, when*, topics, details
• section-project: name*, technologies*, links, when, details
• section-talk: name*, event*, when*

build.sh usage

build.sh can be used to build a PDF file given the following arguments: the base YAML file, the output LaTeX file to generate, the LaTeX template to use to build the final PDF file. For more information about build.sh, run build.sh --help.

Internally build.sh calls:

• the Rust module in this repo to turn the YAML files into a LaTeX file (requires having Rust installed)
• pdflatex to convert the generated LaTeX file along with the template to PDF (requires having texlive installed)

For example, to build the example in the example/ folder with the Developer CV template, the command would be ./build.sh ./example/base.yml ./build/example.tex ./template/developercv.cls.

Templates

Templates are .cls files to be used directly. They contain no CV data, but only style definitions.

If you want to create or adapt your own style you need to implement some LaTeX functions. You can take a look a the templates that are already implemented.

Developer CV

The Developer CV found on OverLeaf with a few changes: developercv.cls.

On Arch Linux the following texlive packages are needed for this template:

• texlive-basic - initial installation
• texlive-latexrecommended - extarticle.cls
• texlive-latexextra - moresize.sty
• texlive-fontsextra (~500MB) - raleway.sty