Fine-tuning page output upon second compilation

Question

This question is quite general. Nonetheless I believe that it touches upon something fundamental. That said, anyone feel free to improve the question.

LaTeX can be thought of as a complex algorithm that does everything without manual fine-tuning. In most cases, one needs to run LaTeX just twice, which is remarkable given that it is a linear compilation process. However LaTeX's design also leads to the disadvantage that certain types of fine-tuning which conceptually really are best done during a post-compilation phase are not easily done with LaTeX.

An example: say I would like to remove the page numbers of all pages with a figure at the top of the page. (If you can think of a better example, feel free to improve the question.) What are ways in LaTeX to make such post-compilation changes easiest? (The idea is that the user can supply additional data after "compilation proper", and one would then run a post-compiler that does some minor fine-tuning.)

I understand that the right answer wouldn't be "a single LaTeX command". Instead, answers might point to (La)TeX derivatives, constructions or tricks on top of the standard LaTeX engine, or conceptual pointers. (And, yes, of course solving this problem will require one additional compilation pass at the end, either directly by LaTeX or by something else. I suppose one could do the initial compilation phase(s) by "something else" and the final run by LaTeX proper. This is an open question, and creativity is welcome.)

Answer 1

It is said that George Bernard Shaw would examine galley proofs of his work and recast sentences, or even whole pages, in order to avoid unsightly word breaks, excessive white space caused by justification, and other typographical difficulties. Of course, he was published at a time when typesetters were sent to the block for committing the abominations above.

Neither an automated system nor a manual system can manage to resolve all the aspects and details of a complex creation such as a book. All those beautiful three column or four column publications with a perfect article fitting exactly on one or two pages has been manually edited to add or remove content, adjust images and the like.

Your example, and maybe is a bad one, captures the essence of the problem well. You want to fix the issue after the compilation of the document; but the problem was created by leaving such a presentational decision after the Class Definition stage whereas it should have been included during the Class Definition stage.

Therefore to answer your question what one could do to make such post-compilation adjustments easier is a few simple steps:

1. Add all the necessary new macros in the Class, pre-amble or your own package, as you discover them.
2. Any items you might use extensively and maybe you bound to change your mind as to how you present them, create macros for them. As for example you might be writing a book on Maritime History and you may want all the names of the ships in italics, rather create a macro \ship. Same goes for items such as "Dr.~Name", where you may want to adjust so that they don't break along two lines.
3. Images and floats give a lot of post-compilation issues, as well as lists and tables. use the right settings.
4. Use the "spiral" technique while writing.

Having said the above there is room for a pre-processor to (All)TeX that can do a bit of automatic correction of common errors, format code blocks (if you writing anything that has to do with coding) and other similar small drudgery type of works. Small scripts in Perl, if you fancy cartoon swearing type syntax or Python if you are a perfectionista can go a long way in making life easier.