How do I create a book with separately produced chapters?

Question

I want to create a book type file, where each chapter is separatly compiled. That is I get the whole thing as well as each individual chapters in pdf or dvi or ps format. How do I do that?

Answer 1

Without using packages, you could use simply the \input commands:

Write each chapter in a separate file (don't compile these files):

In chapter1.tex:

intro to chapter 1
\section{section 1}
section 1 of chapter 1
\section{section 2}
section 2 of chapter 1

In chapter2.tex:

intro to chapter 2
\section{section 1}
section 1 of chapter 2
\section{section 2}
section 2 of chapter 2

Then write your book as:

in book.tex:

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}

\title{Title}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\chapter{Chapter 1 title}
\input{chapter1}

\chapter{Chapter 2 title}
\input{chapter2}

\end{document}

Compile this file to get your full book.

To get the separate chapter as articles, you can compile the following file:

In chapter1Article.tex:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\title{Title of chapter X}
\maketitle

\input{chapterX}

\end{document}

If you want them as a book with only one chapter, use the following file. To get the right chapter number, use \setcounter.

In chapter1Book.tex:

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}

\setcounter{chapter}{X-1}

\chapter{title of chapter X}
\input{chapterX}

\end{document}

etc...

Answer 2

One approach would be to have each chapter in a separate file and then use the \include command to fold them all into a big main file. Then you can use \includeonly to compile each chapter individually. If you compile the whole thing first, then when you do \includeonly you'll get the right numbering and crossreferences would work.

To automate things, what you'd want is a script that does \includeonly for each chapter one after the other, and also changes the jobname such that each chapter is compiled to a distinct file.