Can I specify non-draft sections in a draft document?

Question

I'm working on a big document, 100-200 pages. It's getting quite big mostly because of the images and that's a problem because I need to share it by email with my supervisors.

The draft mode doesn't insert images, instead blank zones where the image should be. That solves part of my problem. For the sections, I am actively working on, I kind of need to see the images. Is there a way to tell LaTeX that such section and such section should be non-draft, when I specified draft in the \documentclass statement?

Otherwise I guess I could just compile the section I am working on, having only the relevant section with images. But that would screw my references and they can come in handy sometimes.

Answer 1

I don't think you can switch draft mode on and off like that (well, not un-hackily).

As a general point, this is the sort of thing that the \include mechanism is for. You \include sections (in the thesis case, most naturally single chapters), and then at the top of the file have \includeonly{chapter3} (or whatever chapter you're working on). That will input only that chapter, but, crucially, keep your references working correctly.