Import specific section from another tex file - latex

I'm trying to import a very specific section or subsection from another latex document. I basically have an export tool that creates a nice tex document and makes the sections for the headers. It's nice to call the whole file but at some point in my combined document I have to just call a subsection over and over again.
How do I call a specific subsection from a whole document?
I have a file call aa.tex and I'm able to use \subimport{}{aa} and it brings in the whole file.
In the file it look similar to
\section{Test Descriptions}
\subsection{Setup}
Hardware and Software... CPU, GPU, RAM etc
\subsection{test1}
\subsubsection{Steps1}
a,b,c,
\subsubsection{Steps2}
a,b,c
I want to be able to call \subsection{setup} over and over again because of what I have to reference.
So, logically how do I only call \subsection{Setup} from aa.tex?

With the catchfilebetweentags package one can selectivity input parts of a file
Main file:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{catchfilebetweentags}
\begin{document}
zzz
\ExecuteMetaData[subdocument]{setup}
zzz
\ExecuteMetaData[subdocument]{setup}
\end{document}
subdocument.tex:
xxx
%<*setup>
\subsection{Setup}
%</setup>
xxx

Related

Including doxygen's LaTeX output as an appendix to a larger document

I have a "project book" which uses LaTeX's \documentclass{report} ("report" is like a more compact version of \documentclass{book}). I would like to include into this book an appendix with the Doxygen-generated API documentation for the software in the project.
I have achieved this by setting Doxygen's config options LATEX_HEADER and LATEX_FOOTER to an empty file. This makes the resulting latex/refman.tex have top level commands like: \section{\-Namespace \-Index}, at which point I can wrap this with a top level document like:
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{doxygen.sty}
% the "import" package helps to find Doxygen files in the latex/ subdirectory
\usepackage{import}
% [...] title page and the rest of the book
\appendix
\chapter{API reference (generated by Doxygen)
subimport{latex/}{refman.tex}
% [...] final stuff
\end{document}
This works reasonably well and I get doxygen.sty with this special doxygen invocation:
doxygen -w latex /dev/null /dev/null doxygen.sty
One problem is that this puts an "autogenerated" header on the entire document (not just on the doxygen appendix). I can get rid of this by editing doxygen.sty (I also rename it for my inclusion, actually) and commenting out the block that starts with % Setup fancy headings.
At this point I have something I can live with, but I would like to go one step further: the "doxygen" style modifies a lot of other aspects of the LaTeX document style, and I like it less.
So my question is (in two levels of excellence):
What would be a minimal set of LaTeX commands to put in a doxygen.sty file that would nicely render the doxygen appendix but not interfere with the rest of the LaTeX document?
Even better, has someone come up with a way of doing
\usepackage{doxygen_standalone}
% [... until you need doxygen]
\begin{doxygen}
% the stuff you need to insert your auto-generated doxygen API docs,
% for example the \subimport{latex/}{refman.tex} that I showed above
\end{doxygen}
This last approach is one I would consider very clean.
I'm hoping there is a really simple answer, such as "this already exists in doxygen.sty as an option, and you missed it!"
rename doxygen.sty to mydoxygen.sty, then modify it by inserting
\newenvironment{doxygen}{... most of doxygen.sty goes here ...}{}

Make a Captions Page

I want to know if there is an easy way to extract the captions of one latex file with the numbers of the figures they are from.
For example if I have 3 figures in defined in my latex file, I need to create a document with the captions of those figures, e.g.,
Fig. 1. Caption of Fig. 1
Fig. 2. Another caption
Fig. 3. Yet another caption
Is there any way of doing this using latex? or should I do it with other program?
I have several figures, so I don't want to go and extract the captions one by one, because I have to number them manually.
Solution.
I solve the problem with a work around. I use another file to include the list of figures and process them separately. The file that I included contains a modified list of figures as follows
{\renewcommand*\numberline[1]{Fig.\,#1:\space}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand*\l#figure[2]{\noindent#1\par}
\makeatother
\listoffigures}
Then, I include it in the original file with \include command. Then it creates the list of figures file as file.lof, I used that file to compile a minimal file to produce the list of figures separately.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{subfigure} % This avoids problems with subfigures captions
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} % I used math in my captions
\nofiles % This makes the aux and lof file not to be deleted
\begin{document}
\include{list} % Includes the same file as before
\end{document}
I was using a different class, other than article, therefore, I need to copy some redefinitions in the auxiliar file. Rename the file.lof to this new file, so latex find it and it will do the work. I put all this in a script and now it works automatically.
Hth.
The \listoffigures control sequence may help you.

Conditional Import in LaTeX?

I'm going to be taking a ton of lecture notes, and then compiling them into LaTeX so that I can have excellent documents for future me to look over. I'm trying to organize things so that I can have a bunch of little documents containing the notes from a lecture, and then compile them at the end of the semester into one large document containing all of them. I have used import/include etc. successfully in the past, but I've had to remove the content at the head and foot of the sub-documents before compiling the main document. For example, I would have to remove:
\begin{document}
and
\end{document}
from every sub-document before compiling the main document. This is fine for a report with 5 or so sections, but a pain in the ass for something with 100+. Any recommendations for ignoring the contents of a LaTeX file programmatically when using the import command?
I see two approaches here. Either carefully structure your documents, or use some hacky TeX magic:
The smart way
Break your smaller documents into a header part, a footer part and a content part.
header.tex:
\documentclass{article}
...
\begin{document}
footer.tex:
\end{document}
foo-content.tex:
In this paper, we discuss an new approach to metasyntactic variables...
foo.tex (the small paper version):
\include{header}
\include{foo-content}
\include{footer}
In your .tex for the collected articles document:
\include{foo-content}
The hacky TeX way
Put this in some common include file, used by your individual files:
\ifx\ismaindoc\undefined
\newcommand{\inbpdocument}{\begin{document}}
\newcommand{\outbpdocument}{\end{document}}
\else
\newcommand{\inbpdocument}{}
\newcommand{\outbpdocument}{}
\fi
Use \inbpdocument and \outbpdocument in your individual files, in place of \begin{document} and \end{document}. In your main file, put in a \def \ismaindoc {} before including or importing anything.
Here's another possible approach: if you put magic strings (i.e., "% % BEGIN LECTURE % %" ... "% % END LECTURE % %") in the individual files, you could awk out the guts of the individual files, assemble them using make/sh, and then \include them.
There's another hack you could use, which wouldn't require modifying the individual files... just temporarily redefine the {document} environment (to something benign, i.e. a no-op), \include the individual files, and then restore the {document} environment definition.
If I recall correctly, the commands to do this are \let and \renewenvironment.
Hm. You might also have to temporarily redefine \documentclass and \usepackage, too. It's a hack, yes, but I think it should work.
I haven't used it, but it looks like the "subfiles" package does exactly what you want:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Modular_Documents#Subfiles_package

Latex, TikZ and separate compilation of chapters and figures

I have fairly large Latex document with a lot of TikZ figures inside. I have a habit of frequent recompilation and it takes forever to compile it using pdflatex. Figures in TikZ take most of the time.
My question is what is the best way to split the document into separate tex files (figures/chapters) to achieve separate compilation of figures and chapters, separate chapter pdfs, and a whole document pdf file ?
Have you tried compiling each picture on its own and then including them in your tex file as pdf rather than the tikz code? You can use the package standalone so that the picture will be the exact size you need. So :
\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz,pgf} %and any other packages or tikzlibraries your picture needs
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
%your tikz code here
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
The good thing about this is that you can either include the compile this document directly to get a pdf figure to include in your document, or you can use the command \input to include it in your main document as a tikz code by adding
\usepackage{standalone}
in your main document (together with the tikz packages and libraries), and then
\begin{figure}
\input{tikzfile.tex}
\end{figure}
There is a possibly better way (imho) to cache tikz-pictures. Add the following lines in your
preamble:
\usetikzlibrary{external}
\tikzexternalize[prefix=i/]
After a pdflatex-run you'll see all pictures in the subdirectory ./i .
If you update the code of a tikz-picture simply throw away its corresponding pdf-file and it will be regenerated. For more info see the manual of PFG/TikZ section 32.4 Externalizing Graphics
and possibly 32.5 Using External Graphics Without pgf Installed.
How about putting each chapter in a separate file and then using \include to put them into some master file? Then you can use \includeonly to only compile the chapter you're currently working on. That should save some time at least.
I expect some sort of makefile based solution would be even better than this, but I don't know anything about makefiles...
The way I generally do this is to apply Latex to just part of the file: Emacs and several other Latex editors allow you to compiler regions: with Auctex, you can run TeX-pin-region to specify the current chapter, and then TeX-command-region to run Latex on the selected region.
The traditional way to do this is cut parts of the big file into smaller parts that are \included, and then either comment out parts you don't want to work on, or put some macrology at the beginning and end of each file that allows them to be compiled separately.

Example for a simple LaTeX glossary

I'm trying to include a simple glossary to my LaTeX document,
I already searched for something like that on google, but never got it running.
I would like to use glossary or glossaries.
how to write it in the text?
how to print it?
what to execute on which position?
Well, there is a glossaries package on CTAN. Read the pdf documentation.
Check if you already have it in your installation, if not install it, and put \usepackage{glossaries} in the preamble of you document and it will be available to you.
It looks like you need \usepackage{glossaries} and \makeglossaries in the preamble, and some number of \newglossaryentry and \newacronym calls (it is not immediately clear to me if these only go in the premble or can go in the document text). Finally, you will need one or more \printglossary calls in the text. Use \gsl to connect glossary entries on the argument with the pages they occur on.
Processing the file will have to include a call to makeglossaries followed by at least one more invokation of latex.
In addition to the samples mentioned in the documentation there is a Stack Overflow question which includes a minimal file making use of glossaries. You may be particularly interested in the acronym glossary.
There is a nice blog for beginners: LaTeX glossary and list of acronyms
Here is an example:
\documentclass{article}
% Load the package
\usepackage{glossaries}
% Generate the glossary
**\makeglossaries**
\begin{document}
%Term definitions
\newglossaryentry{utc}{name=UTC, description={Coordinated Universal Time}}
\newglossaryentry{adt}{name=ADT, description={Atlantic Daylight Time}}
\newglossaryentry{est}{name=EST, description={Eastern Standard Time}}
% Use the terms
\gls{utc} is 3 hours behind \gls{adt} and 10 hours ahead of \gls{est}.
%Print the glossary
\printglossaries
\end{document}

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