Directory macros/latex/contrib/subdocs

An alternative to include's for large works consisting of several subdocuments. Still alpha.

This is a tentative package aiming to provide a different approach for multidocument works (mainly, books with a document per chapter). Unlike the include mechanism, every subdocument is a complete LaTeX document and can be typeset separately. What the package does is sharing the aux files. It's still an alpha version, and no attempt has been done yet to make it to work with, say, hyperref.

This approach has the following advantages: 1) Packages can be loaded just when a part requires them. 2) Generated pdf/dvi/ps files are kept.

You need a driver tex file containing a subdocuments command listing the files. With an optional argument you can set its behaviour:

subdocumentsclear=double{file1, file2, file3}

The option clear=double adds an empty page at the end to give a even number of pages. clear=single doesn't and it's the default. Spaces and new lines before and after commas are ignored, as well as empty items. It relies on the keyval package, so names containing = must be given within braces.

This file can be used as a shared preample, with common settings for all the documents.

Documents must have the folowing line:

usepackagemaster{subdocs}

where master is the name of the file described above.

Since every subdocument reads all the aux files, tableofcontents may be used where desired.

License: MIT

Javier Bezos — http://www.texnia.com