How to fast switch from sections to chapters

Question

I have a file composed by many sections: I'm not sure of this choice, and maybe in the future I want to switch to chapters (or to subsections, for example).

My solution is the following command:

\newcommand{\mychapter}[1]
{
\section{#1}
}

And I use \mychapter{Title} instead of \section{Title}. In this way I can simply edit the command to switch from sections to whatever I want.

Is this a valid solution?

Answer 1

If you really want to do this:

\begingroup
\let\orisection\section
\let\orisubsection\subsection
\let\orisubsubsection\subsubsection
\let\oriparagraph\paragraph
\let\orisubparagraph\subparagraph
\global\let\section\chapter
\global\let\subsection\orisection
\global\let\subsubsection\orisubsection
\global\let\paragraph\orisubsubsection
\global\let\subparagraph\oriparagraph
\global\let\subsubparagraph\orisubparagraph % for symmetry
\endgroup

Answer 2

I would find this rather confusing if I went back to a document after a while, or was asked to review a document for someone else. You could use something like \newcommand{\MyLevelOneDiv}[1]{\section{#1}}, but I would take a different approach.

In any decent text editor you can do this with a simple find/replace with regular expressions. By searching for \\section\{([^}]*)\} and replacing with \\subsection{$1} you can easily demote all sections to subsections. This simple version doesn't work for optionl short titles, or if you have macros with } inside the title.

A version that would work for (sub)section names such as \section[short title]{A rather \emph{long} title} is to replace \\section(\[[^\]]*\])?(\{.*\})\s*$ with \\subsection$1\$2 (although this assumes that you have nothing other than whitespace after the closing } -- no good if you want a comment there.

The exact syntax may need tweaking depending on your regex engine, especially in terms of exactly which brakcets need escaping with a \ in the search, and how to refer to the captured groups in the replacement. My versions are tested under jEdit.

Many TeX-specific editors don't offer this feature, which is why I don't use them, preferring a general programming text editor.

Answer 3

You could use the memoir class which encompasses the book, report and article classes. Set up your document as though it was a book or report (i.e. use \chapter as the main document division). Then if you specify

\documentclass[...]{memoir}

it will be set like a book or report, but if you specify

\documentclass[article,...]{memoir}

it will be set like an article with chapters set as section, sections set as subsections, etc.

Answer 4

It should do the job, but you should take care of subsections, subsubsections, ... as well.

\newcommand{\mychapter}[1]
{
    \section{#1}
}
\newcommand{\mysection}[1]
{
    \subsection{#1}
}
\newcommand{\mysubsection}[1]
{
    \subsubsection{#1}
}
...

This way you can adjust your whole structure in a single place.