Journal asks me to combine Latex files into single file

Question

I am writing an article consisting of multiple sections. For each section I more or less have a separate tex file, which are included in a main file. The journal I'm submitting to now asks me to integrate all files in a single file. I'm just wondering, isn't this quite bad practice? I mean, there's a reason for LaTeX to provide include commands.

This is not so much of a question, but I was just hoping to hear some opinions.

Answer 1

As a general practice I like to use \include to keep everything clean and tidy, specially because it allows me to include just the files I want.

That said, when you have a large document, you can use \includeonly{chapter1,chapter2} and that will make ignore the rest of things and only compile chapter 1 and 2.

Now, if they are asking you to have everything in one file just comply... Maybe it's because of file storage purposes that they are asking it (or perhaps they just don't want to have a lot of files associated with one author).

Either way, you can also have a look at this post When should I use \input vs. \include? for more information about \include and several files projects.

Answer 2

They probably don't use TeX in their publishing process but (most probably - are you talking about an AIP journal?) XML. And they probably have scripts that convert the input to XML - it's a pain to write them in such a way that all eventualities are considered.

I am using pgfplots and tikz to do my plots and thus I had to combine everything into one file when submitting. I wrote a perl script that parses csv input files and outputs LaTeX code. But in the end, I had to submit all the graphics as pdf after all: their TeX engine choked on my files even though all the other online-compilers and my local installation ran without complaining. Couldn't manage to get it working...

Anyway, here is the perl script in case you're interested. Remember: it only parses the files and outputs LaTeX code - it doesn't actually combine all the snippets. It's quick and dirty, but a good starting point if you want to have a go.

My advice: just copy the biblatex and everything else in one file as the absolutely last step and submit the graphics as PDFs.

#! C:/Programme/Perl/bin/perl -w
use strict;

unless(@ARGV<1){ # Check if input file is given as a commandline argument
    open(FILE,"<".$ARGV[0]) or die("Error reading file: ".$ARGV[0]." ".$!);
    my $textraw="";
    while(<FILE>){$textraw.=$_;}
    close(FILE) or die("Error closing file: ".$ARGV[0]." ".$!);
    my $patternMatch;
    my @addplot;
    my $n=0;
    while($textraw =~ /(\\addplot.*?)table\[(.*?)?,?\s?x expr\=(.*?),y expr\=(.*?)\]\n\s+\{([^\}]*)\}/sg){
        $patternMatch++;
        my $plotCommand=$1;
        my $skipRows=$2;
        my @xCol;
        $xCol[0]=$3;
        my @yCol;
        $yCol[0]=$4;
        my $DataFileName=$5;
        if($skipRows){$skipRows=~s/skip first n=(\d)/$1/g;}
        else{$skipRows=0;}
        open(FILE,"<".$DataFileName) or die("Error reading file: ".$DataFileName." ".$!);
            my $i;
            #$addplot[$n]=$1."coordinates {";
            print $1."coordinates {";
            LINE:while(<FILE>){
                my $xCoord;
                my $yCoord;
                chomp($_);
                $i++;
                if($i<=$skipRows){next LINE;}
                if(($xCol[0]=~m/\\thisrow\{/)||($yCol[0]=~m/\\thisrow\{/)){
                    # I was going to put logic here to account for people using \thisrow.
                    # Screw this - it's too much hassle. Please use \thisrowno
                    die("Error: \thisrow{} detected - unable to parse. Please change LaTeX source to \thisrowno.");
                }
                my $xColStack=0;
                my $xOperator="+";
                my $xColTmp=$xCol[0];
                while($xColTmp=~/\\thisrowno\{(.*?)\}(.*)?/g){
                    my $columnIndex=$1;
                    my $additionalDirectives=$2;
                    $xColTmp=$additionalDirectives;
                    $_=~m/\s*(\S*)\s*(\S*)\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?/;
                    my %selectColumn = (
                        0 => $1,
                        1 => $2,
                        2 => $3,
                        3 => $4,
                        4 => $5,
                        5 => $6,
                        6 => $7,
                        7 => $8,
                        8 => $9,
                        9 => $10,
                        10 => $11,
                        11 => $12,
                        12 => $13,
                        13 => $14,
                        14 => $15
                    );
                    if($xOperator eq "+"){
                        $xColStack+=$selectColumn{$columnIndex};
                    }
                    else{
                        die("Unsupported operator - you have to implement it yourself. I only added \"+\".")
                    }
                    if($additionalDirectives=~/(.)?\d?\\thisrowno/){
                        $xOperator=$1;
                    }
                    elsif($additionalDirectives=~/(.)\s*?(\d*)/){
                        #die "[".$additionalDirectives."]";
                        #$xColStack=$xColStack;
                        die("There are some additional operations to be executed on the data, namely: $additionalDirectives \n Please use awk to format the data as this cannot be parsed. awk usage is as follows:\n gawk \"{\$1=\$1*1000;\$2=\\\"\\\";$\3=$\3*12e-3*1e-6/284;print}\" file.in > file.out");
                    }
                }
                #$addplot[$n].="(".$xColStack.",";
                print "(".$xColStack.",";
                my $yColStack=0;
                my $yOperator="+";
                my $yColTmp=$yCol[0];
                while($yColTmp=~/\\thisrowno\{(.*?)\}(.*)?/g){
                    my $columnIndex=$1;
                    my $additionalDirectives=$2;
                    print $2;
                    $yColTmp=$additionalDirectives;
                    $_=~m/\s*(\S*)\s*(\S*)\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?\s*(\S*)?/;
                    my %selectColumn = (
                        0 => $1,
                        1 => $2,
                        2 => $3,
                        3 => $4,
                        4 => $5,
                        5 => $6,
                        6 => $7,
                        7 => $8,
                        8 => $9,
                        9 => $10,
                        10 => $11,
                        11 => $12,
                        12 => $13,
                        13 => $14,
                        14 => $15
                    );
                    if($yOperator eq "+"){
                        $yColStack+=$selectColumn{$columnIndex};
                    }
                    else{
                        die("Unsupported operator - you have to implement it yourself. I only added \"+\".")
                    }
                    if($additionalDirectives=~/(.)?\d?\\thisrowno/){
                        $yOperator=$1;
                    }
                    elsif($additionalDirectives=~/(.)\s*?(\d*)/){
                        #die "[".$additionalDirectives."]";
                        #$xColStack=$xColStack;
                    }
                }
                #$addplot[$n].=$yColStack.")";
                print $yColStack.")";
            }
            #$addplot[$n].="};";
            print "};\n\n";
        close(FILE) or die("Error closing file: ".$DataFileName." ".$!);
        #$n++;
    }
    #$n=0;
    #while($textraw =~ /(\\addplot.*?)table\[.*?\]\n\s+\{.*?\}/sg){
    #   
    #   $n++;
    #}
}
else{print "Error: no input file given!\n\nUsage: $0 inputfile.\n";}