Chapters and Formatting Headers

Question

When I am composing a large document in LaTeX, I often compose the chapters in separate documents. When I do this I have to copy and paste a large block of header text to the chapter I am editing so I can make sure the formatting is correct while I am writing it.

How can I import a header file of formatting information with a single line?

Answer 1

Solution 1: Put everything up to your \begin{document} in a separate file, say, preamble.tex. You can load this file in your document by saying \input{preamble}.

Solution 2: Almost the other way around: put your chapters in separate files, and have a main file like this

\documentclass...
.
.
.
\includeonly{chapter2}
\begin{document}
\include{chapter1}
\include{chapter2}
.
.
\end{document}

which will cause LaTeX to skip all the other chapters and only use chapter2.tex when you compile main.tex. (You can also list multiple chapters like so: \includeonly{chapter1,chapter7}.)

Answer 2

Put it in a file called header.tex and in your main chapter put \input{header.tex}.

But, you might be better off creating a master file that has the header text in it, then \includes the chapters.

\documentclass{book}
\title{my awesome book}
\author{me}
\date{\today}

\includeonly{ch1}
\begin{document}
\include{ch1.tex}
\include{ch2.tex}
...
\end{document}

Changing the \includeonly line allows you to switch on and off what gets included. So you could only include the chapter you were working on to make compiling quicker.

Answer 3

You can also embed the command \input if you want something to appear irrespective of the \include commands:

\documentclass{book}
\title{my awesome book}
\author{me}
\date{\today}

\includeonly{ch1}
\begin{document}
\include{ch1.tex}
\include{ch2.tex}
...
\input{appendix}
\end{document}