How to create individual chapter PDFs

Question

My document structure has

• one file with preamble (i.e. MainTex)
• and around 75 individual .tex files (i.e. Chapter_01, Chapter_02, ..., Chapter_75) representing each chapter.

I am using \include command to create a one big PDF file, the output is MainTex.pdf. Life is all good up to this point.

If I have to create individual PDF for each chapter then do I need to run 75 times with each chapter name and rename the PDF manually to match to chapter name. Because if I include only Chapter_01 and run it creates PDF named as MainTex.pdf.

Is there a way I can automate this workflow?

Answer 1

Suppose your main file is maintex.tex:

\documentclass[a4paper]{book}
\begin{document}
\include{chap01}
\include{chap02}
\include{chap03}
\end{document}

Then you can compile only chapter 1 by calling, from the command line

pdflatex -jobname=thechap01 "\includeonly{chap01}\input{maintex}"

In order to do all at once, the command might be (bash shell)

for i in chap*.tex; do j=${i%.tex}; pdflatex -jobname=the$j "\includeonly{$j}\input{maintex}"; done

It's necessary to change the output file name from chap01 to something different, because otherwise the reading of the .aux file would lead to an infinite loop. It's easy to rename the obtained PDF files afterwards (or in the same command, by adding ; mv the$j.pdf $j.pdf before done).

Answer 2

Yes, this workflow is supported, but it has to be performed from the start, rather than after the fact. Here's what I mean by that.

The subfiles package provides the means to actually have individual sub files that are included in your main .tex file (using \include or \includeonly) but also are compilable themselves. The package should be included in the main .tex, while each subfile has a working preamble. You can then iterate (loop) over the respective subfiles (chapters in your case) using a standard bash script, and compile each chapter using latex, pdflatex or xelatex. For example, under DOS, the following should work:

for /f %%a IN ('dir /b Chapter_??.tex') do call pdflatex %%a

You may have to run this entire script at least two times for references in each chapter to work.

The standalone document class provides a similar functionality, skipping preambles of included files and only considering content contained within the document environment when compiling the main .tex. Included files, however are individually compilable.

The main drawback from compiling this way is referencing across chapters and page numbers that will restart at 1 for each chapter. The former might be addressed using the xr package, while the latter may be addessed by inserting the respective page number modification in the document preamble (via \setcounter{page}{...}), perhaps even reading it from the main .aux file. Regardless, this fiddling may be difficult to master if not set up properly.

Answer 3

See my reply at Extract document statistics? - How many pages has chapter xy? Count fixmes?: python script which extracts chapters/sections/... from .toc file and splits the final PDF.

Answer 4

I wrote a bunch on the standalone package, and then saw Werner beat me too it. Ah well!

As an aside, I use Chris Monson's Ultimate LaTeX Makefile to build documents. If you have a UNIX system (or cygwin), it just works. For example, you could type "make Chapter_01" (to use your file name) and it would produce a nice PDF with correct references, etc.

However, its best feature is automatic dependency tracking. It would be able to determine that your main file depends on the 50+ chapter files, and it will recompile as necessary. This is great if you are tweaking a chapter but building the entire document.

It even takes care of running latex and biblatex enough times to get everything working right!

Answer 5

I have a similar workflow, and what I do is only semi-automatic, but it's enough for my use case. After I read this post, I wrote a simple (and funny, I guess) LaTeX template for doing this. (It might not be useful for you, since one has to know the pagenumbers, but it is still more comfortable for me than pdfsam or "print to file" solutions.)

Answer 6

Here's a way that uses the fabulous arara tool to implement @egreg's solution

main.tex

% arara: makechapters: {files: [lions,zebras], mainfile: main}
\documentclass{report}

\begin{document}

\include{lions}
\include{zebras}

\end{document}

makechapters.yaml

!config
# Make chapter files rule for arara
# author: cmh
# last edited by: cmh
# requires arara 3.0+
identifier: makechapters
name: MakeChapters
command: <arara> pdflatex -jobname=the@{file} "\includeonly{@{file}}\input{@{mainfile}}" 
arguments:
- identifier: mainfile
  flag: <arara> @{parameters.mainfile}