How to automatically create a book of abstracts of a scientific conference?

Question

I'd like to prepare a book of abstracts of a scientific conference. I expect to receive about 650 articles. Suppose the articles are all the same document class and all have the following structure (feel free to change its structure):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just for this example
\newcommand{\university}[1]{\\ \itshape #1}
\title{Title of the first article}
\author{Author 1 \university{Foo University}}
\date{}
\begin{document}
 \maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}
\section{Introduction}
Here goes some text ...
\end{document}

I want to extract the title, author, university, and the abstract of articles and put each two of them on the same page in my "Book of Abstracts" as follows:

Due to the large number of articles I want to automatically do this. Is there a package or template to do this?
Please keep in mind that I've searched this site very well and I didn't find an automatic way.

Edit

Please assume that "Call for Papers" will be about next month, so we can still change the source code above if it helps find a better solution.

Answer 1

You can try this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just for this example
\newcommand{\university}[1]{\cr \itshape #1}

\def\onlyabstracts{%
   \long\def\documentclass##1##2\title##3##4\begin##5{\title{##3}##4}
   \def\title##1{\vskip5ex{\centering\LARGE##1\par}}
   \let\author=\authorX \let\and=\andX
   \def\date##1{}
   \let\maketitle=\relax
   \let\abstractX=\abstract
   \def\abstract{\abstractX \aftergroup\endinput}
}
\def\authorX#1{\medskip{\leftskip=0pt plus1fill \rightskip=\leftskip \lineskip=8pt
   \noindent\andA#1\crcr\egroup\egroup\par}}
\def\andA{\vtop\bgroup\baselineskip=14pt\halign\bgroup\hfil\large##\unskip\hfil\cr}
\def\andX{\crcr\egroup\egroup\hskip3em plus1em\andA}

\begin{document}
\onlyabstracts
\input article1
\input article2
\input article3
...
\input article169
\end{document}

If you don't want to write 169times the \input article<number> you can use \loop. For example:

\newcount\tmpnum
\loop \advance\tmpnum by1 \input article\the\tmpnum\relax \ifnum\tmpnum<169 \repeat

Answer 2

I've written a short pythontex solution:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{pythontex}

\newcommand{\university}[1]{{\centering\itshape\large #1\par}\vskip5ex}
\newcommand{\abstitle}[1]{{\centering\LARGE #1\par}\vskip3ex}
\newcommand{\absauthor}[1]{{\centering\large #1\par}}
\newcommand{\absname}{{\centering\bfseries\abstractname\par}\vskip1ex}

\begin{document}

\begin{pycode}
from __future__ import print_function
import os

os.chdir("..") #delete this for standalone script

content = open("content.tex", "w+")
path = os.getcwd() + "/abstracts" #directory for abstract tex files

for file in os.listdir(path):
    if file.endswith(".tex"):
        with open(path + "/" + file) as input_data:
            for line in input_data:
                if "\\title{" in line: 
                    line = line.replace("\\title{","\\abstitle{")
                    print(line, file=content)  
                if "\\author{" in line:
                    line = line.replace("\\author{","\\absauthor{")
                    print(line, file=content)
                if "\\university{" in line:
                    print(line, file=content)
                    print("\\absname\n", file=content)  
                if line.strip() == "\\begin{abstract}": 
                    break
            for line in input_data:  
                if line.strip() == "\\end{abstract}":
                    break
                print(line, file=content)
                #additional stuff after abstract content
\end{pycode}
\IfFileExists{content.tex}{
 \input{content.tex}
}{Test}
\end{document}

Place all .tex-files in folder abstracts (or simply change the path) and run:

pdflatex filename.tex
pythontex filename.tex
pdflatex filename.tex

You really have to pay attention to the indents. The following commands can't be nested:

\title{...}
\author{...}
\university{...}

Otherwise, they appear twice.

You can customize everything in LaTeX or add some additional stuff with the python print-function.

Answer 3

^{I was threatened in the chatroom for writing an answer, so here it is. :)}

Personally, I think there cannot be an automatic solution in the sense of working without a minimal effort on complying with a couple of rules. That said, I decided to take the scripting path and provide a very simple yet powerful solution to this question.

First things first: I admit a paper containing at least something along these lines:

\title{How to eat rice}
\author{Foo Bar and Baz Fooz}
...
\begin{abstract}
Here lies my awesome text.
\end{abstract}

I could use regular expressions in order to extract these fields, but I decided to implement my own finite state machine with a few tricks under the sleeve: a very simple counting mechanism in order to detect a straightforward syntactic nesting and avoid premature symbol extraction. Of course, the script is hardcoded, but that's the price when you want things that work. :)

Without further ado, here's the Python script. Hopefully the Python enthusiasts won't kill me for being excessively verbose, but that's just the way I like to code. :) In case you are lost, these are FSM's. Of course, the solution is trivial, but I wouldn't even think of expanding the idea of using them beyond this simple case study, since TeX is not even context free. But that's another story.

from Cheetah.Template import Template
import glob, sys, getopt

def getTitle(text):
    output = ""
    state = 0
    counter = 0
    for symbol in text:
        if state == 0:
            if symbol == '\\':
                state = 1
        elif state == 1:
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 2
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 2:
            if symbol == 'i':
                state = 3
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 3:
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 4
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 4:
            if symbol == 'l':
                state = 5
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 5:
            if symbol == 'e':
                state = 6
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 6:
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
                state = 7
            elif symbol not in [ ' ', '\n', '\t', '\r' ]:
                state = 0
        elif state == 7:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
            elif symbol == '\\':
                state = 8
            elif symbol == '}':
                counter = counter - 1
                if counter == 0:
                    return output[:-1]
        elif state == 8:
            output = output + symbol
            state = 7
    return "not found"

def getAuthor(text):
    output = ""
    state = 0
    counter = 0
    for symbol in text:
        if state == 0:
            if symbol == '\\':
                state = 1
        elif state == 1:
            if symbol == 'a':
                state = 2
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 2:
            if symbol == 'u':
                state = 3
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 3:
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 4
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 4:
            if symbol == 'h':
                state = 5
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 5:
            if symbol == 'o':
                state = 6
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 6:
            if symbol == 'r':
                state = 7
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 7:
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
                state = 8
            elif symbol not in [ ' ', '\n', '\t', '\r' ]:
                state = 0
        elif state == 8:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
            elif symbol == '\\':
                state = 9
            elif symbol == '}':
                counter = counter - 1
                if counter == 0:
                    return output[:-1]
        elif state == 9:
            output = output + symbol
            state = 8
    return "not found"

def getAbstract(text):
    output = ""
    state = 0
    counter = 0
    for symbol in text:
        if state == 0:
            if symbol == '\\':
                state = 1
        elif state == 1:
            if symbol == 'b':
                state = 2
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 2:
            if symbol == 'e':
                state = 3
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 3:
            if symbol == 'g':
                state = 4
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 4:
            if symbol == 'i':
                state = 5
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 5:
            if symbol == 'n':
                state = 6
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 6:
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
                state = 7
            elif symbol not in [ ' ', '\n', '\t', '\r' ]:
                state = 0
        elif state == 7:
            if symbol == 'a':
                state = 8
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 8:
            if symbol == 'b':
                state = 9
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 9:
            if symbol == 's':
                state = 10
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 10:
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 11
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 11:
            if symbol == 'r':
                state = 12
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 12:
            if symbol == 'a':
                state = 13
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 13:
            if symbol == 'c':
                state = 14
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 14:
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 15
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 15:
            if symbol == '}':
                counter = 0
                state = 16
            else:
                state = 0
        elif state == 16:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
            elif symbol == '\\':
                state = 17
            elif symbol == '}':
                counter = counter - 1
        elif state == 17:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'e':
                state = 18
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 18:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'n':
                state = 19
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 19:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'd':
                state = 20
                payload = 0
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 20:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == '{':
                counter = counter + 1
                state = 21
            elif symbol not in [ ' ', '\n', '\t', '\r' ]:
                state = 16
            else:
                payload = payload + 1
        elif state == 21:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'a':
                state = 22
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 22:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'b':
                state = 23
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 23:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 's':
                state = 24
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 24:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 25
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 25:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'r':
                state = 26
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 26:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'a':
                state = 27
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 27:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 'c':
                state = 28
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 28:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == 't':
                state = 29
            else:
                state = 16
        elif state == 29:
            output = output + symbol
            if symbol == '}':
                counter = counter - 1
                if counter == 0:
                    return output[:-(payload + 14)]
                else:
                    state = 16
            else:
                state = 16
    return "not found"

def getArticles(path):
    elements = glob.glob(path)
    articles = []
    for element in elements:
        with open(element, 'r') as handler:
            content = handler.read()
            article = {}
            article['title'] = getTitle(content)
            article['author'] = getAuthor(content)
            article['abstract'] = getAbstract(content).strip()
            articles.append(article)
    return articles

def generateTemplate(articles, template, output):
    with open(template, 'r') as handler:
        content = handler.read()
        merge = Template(source=content, searchList=[ { 'data': articles } ])
    with open(output, 'w') as handler:
        handler.write(str(merge))

def main(arguments):
    options, _ = getopt.getopt(arguments, 'p:t:o:', ['path=', 'template=', 'output='])
    if len(options) == 3:
        for flag, value in options:
            if flag in ('-p', '--path'):
                path = value
            if flag in ('-t', '--template'):
                template = value
            if flag in ('-o', '--output'):
                output = value
        articles = getArticles(path)
        generateTemplate(articles, template, output)

main(sys.argv[1:])

Now let's say I have two papers as follows, following the very same structure:

article1.tex

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand{\university}[1]{{(\itshape#1)}}

\title{Title of the first article}
\author{Author 1 \university{Foo University} and Author 2 \university{Potato U}}
\date{}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
This is a lovely abstract for paper 1. How do you like my text?
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}

Here goes some text of article 1.

\end{document}

article2.tex

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand{\university}[1]{{(\itshape#1)}}

\title{Title of the second article}
\author{Author 1 \university{Disney University}, Author 2 \university{Duck Academy} and Author 3 \university{University of Nowhere}}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
This is a lovely abstract for paper 2. How do you like my text?
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}

Here goes some text of article 2.

\end{document}

Output of both, as one would expect. :)

article1.pdf

article2.tex

Now let's use the script. First of all, we need to create a template using the Cheetah language description. Simply put, we will use a for loop where we iterate through all dictionaries in the data array. Note that $ is used as a placeholder and not as math mode, as we are used in TeX. Don't worry with them, they'll be gone once we merge everything. :) Since we are dealing with a dictionary, we access values from its keys, so $article['title'] will return the title of that article. :) Here's our template:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\newcommand{\university}[1]{{(\itshape#1)}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{p{.33\linewidth}p{.33\linewidth}p{.33\linewidth}}
\hline
Title & Authors & Abstract\\
\hline
#for $article in $data
$article['title'] & $article['author'] & $article['abstract']\\
#end for
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

We can run the Python script providing the following parameters:

• --path/-p <full path + file patterns>: the script will read all files in the provided path matching the file pattern. For example, /home/paulo/papers/*.tex will extract info from all .tex files in the papers folder under my home directory.
• --template/-t <full template path>: the template to be populated with data extracted from files in the previous option. For example, /home/paulo/template.tex.
• --output/-o <full output path>: the output file with all data merged into the template. For example, /home/paulo/abstracts.tex.

Let's run:

$ python code.py --path /home/paulo/papers/.tex --template /home/paulo/template.tex --output abstracts.tex

And that's it. This is the generated file:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\newcommand{\university}[1]{{(\itshape#1)}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{p{.33\linewidth}p{.33\linewidth}p{.33\linewidth}}
\hline
Title & Authors & Abstract\\
\hline
Title of the first article & Author 1 \university{Foo University} and Author 2 \university{Potato U} & This is a lovely abstract for paper 1. How do you like my text?\\
Title of the second article & Author 1 \university{Disney University}, Author 2 \university{Duck Academy} and Author 3 \university{University of Nowhere} & This is a lovely abstract for paper 2. How do you like my text?\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

And this is the output:

Hope it helps. :)

Answer 4

My solution - is to use pdfpages package.

Main idea is:

1) creation of separate abstracts by scheme .tex to pdf (without headers and footers). TeX code of the abstract should write information about article (title, author or some other) into the .dat file. For more detail look here

2) Create .tex-combine, which will collect the abstracts in book of abstracts with pdfpages package, add a headers and footers to the pdf pages and create table of contents (using created before .dat-file). For more detail look here.

Code for inserting pdf pages:

%------------Macro for insertinf PDF---------------------
\newcommand\papertitle{}% initialize
\newcommand\paperauthors{}% initialize
\newcommand{\thispapertitle}[1]{\renewcommand\papertitle{#1}}


\newcommand{\insertpaper}[1]%
  {% #1 is the file name (without extension)
   \clearpage
   \renewcommand\papertitle{}% reinitialize
   \renewcommand\paperauthors{}% reinitialize
   \input{#1.dat}%
     \phantomsection
        \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\papertitle} 
        \chapterprecistoc{\paperauthors}
   \includepdf[pages=-, link, pagecommand={\pagestyle{plain}}]{#1.pdf}%
}

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\thispaperauthor}[2]{%
    \g@addto@macro\paperauthors{#1}%
  \ifx#2\finishauthors
    % no more authors
  \else
    \g@addto@macro\paperauthors{, }%
    \expandafter\thispaperauthor % reinsert the swallowed token
  \fi
}
\makeatother

\def\InsertNumArticles#1#2{%
    \edef\fold{#2}
    \newcount\i
    \i1
    \newcount\f
    \f#1
    \advance\f by1
    \loop \ifnum\i<\the\f \insertpaper{\fold/paper\the\i/paper\the\i} \advance\i by1 \repeat
}

Using this macro in .tex -combine:

\part*{Name of section 1} 

\InsertNumArticles{2}{1Plenar}
% here `2` -- is a number of the abstracts
% `1Plenar` -- folder, which is contain `pdf` and `dat` files, source of abstract `.tex`, `.aux` and so on.

\part{Name of section 2}

\InsertNumArticles{3}{Astrophysics}

\part{Name of section 3}

\InsertNumArticles{3}{Geo science}

Answer 5

Around year 2000, I actually faced a similar challenge: I had to create an annual consortium report from individually supplied papers. I wrote my own class to do this but it was essentially based on the "combine" package as mentioned by Uwe Ziegenhagen in a comment above (as it is an actual solution, it deserves more than a comment). I don't know whether the package is still maintained nowadays but it certainly did the job at the time. Although I have left the consortium in 2004, my work is still used today. An example of a consortium report can be found here. You can easily identify the individual papers. The combine package does not just combine abstracts, it can combine entire papers. But you can simply create an own little class that takes care of the abstracts only if necessary. I suggest you read the documentation and have a go. If you need any help, let me know. Creation of the master tex file (that in your case includes all the individual 650 papers/abstracts) can be automated with a little script.

Answer 6

This is just the solution proposed by wipet in mode batch. All you need is to put this .bat in the same directory of articles and run it (clic twice) you'll get abstract.tex and abstract.pdf test with 651 .tex files

@echo off

set path=C:/texlive/2014/bin/win32;%path%

(
echo \documentclass{article}
echo \usepackage{lipsum}
echo \newcommand{\university}[1]{\cr \itshape #1}
echo.
echo \def\onlyabstracts{%
echo    \long\def\documentclass##1##2\title##3##4\begin##5{\title{##3}##4}
echo    \def\title##1{\vskip5ex{\centering\LARGE##1\par}}
echo    \let\author=\authorX \let\and=\andX
echo    \def\date##1{}
echo    \let\maketitle=\relax
echo    \let\abstractX=\abstract
echo    \def\abstract{\abstractX \aftergroup\endinput}
echo }
echo \def\authorX#1{\medskip{\leftskip=0pt plus1fill \rightskip=\leftskip \lineskip=8pt
echo    \noindent\andA#1\crcr\egroup\egroup\par}}
echo \def\andA{\vtop\bgroup\baselineskip=14pt\halign\bgroup\hfil\large##\unskip\hfil\cr}
echo \def\andX{\crcr\egroup\egroup\hskip3em plus1em\andA}
echo.
echo \begin{document}
echo \onlyabstracts
) > abstract.tet
for %%a in (*.tex) do echo \input %%a  >> abstract.tet
echo \end{document} >> abstract.tet
ren abstract.tet abstract.tex
pdflatex abstract.tex

for %%a in (*.tet, *.aux, *.log, *.lof, *.lot, *.toc, *.idx, *.ilg, *.ind, *sync*, *.out, *.bbl, *.blg, *.thm) do del %%a

Answer 7

I recently had to face the same challenge in order to organize a physics workshop. A set of python tool has been developed to compile directly the booklet from a database provided by a google webform to collect the abstract information. The source code is available in github: https://github.com/olivier-klein/booklet

Answer 8

this .bat does the job

@echo off

set path=%~dp0/../../mtTex/miktex/bin;%path%

for  %%a in (*.tex) do  (
pdflatex "\AtBeginDocument{\let\mt\abstract\let\mmt\endabstract\renewenvironment{abstract}{\mt}{\mmt\newpage}}\input{%%a}")
for  %%a in (*.pdf) do  echo \includepdf[pages=1]{%%a} >>mtt.ext
echo \end{document} >> mtt.ext
pdflatex mtt.ext

where mtt.ext is

\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}

all in one .bat

@echo off

set path=%~dp0/../../mtTex/miktex/bin;%path%

for  %%a in (*.tex) do  (
pdflatex "\AtBeginDocument{\let\mt\abstract\let\mmt\endabstract\renewenvironment{abstract}{\thispagestyle{empty}\mt}{\mmt\stop}}\input{%%a}")
echo \documentclass{article} >> mtt.tex 
echo \usepackage{pdfpages} >> mtt.tex
echo \begin{document} >> mtt.tex
for  %%a in (*.pdf) do  echo \includepdf[pages=1]{%%a} >> mtt.tex
echo \end{document} >> mtt.tex
pdflatex mtt.tex
ren mtt.pdf mtt.mtp
for %%a in (mtt.tex, *.pdf, *.aux, *.log, *.lof, *.lot, *.toc, *.idx, *.ilg, *.ind, *sync*, *.out, *.bbl, *.blg, *.thm) do del %%a
ren mtt.mtp mtt.pdf
del mtt.mtp

it make 1min37s for 181 files:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\title{Les document}
\author{Moi meme}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}
\lipsum[1-10]
\end{document}