What is best practice to set up Multi-file tex documents?

Question

I have researched the topic how to split my big book project into several files. Basically there are two main packages I found one should work with which are the “standalone” and the “subFile” package. It seems also that /input in combination with “standalone” is the best option for the whole setup since /input can be nested and with /standalone one can compile even the child files. besides with /input one can even connect glossary-term files into the main document. I hope that correct so far! Now I’m wondering if there is something like an “up-to-date best practice guide” here somewhere handling this topic or is there a chance to set something like that up here. I can imagine a lot of newbies like me would love such a guide for this important topic?

All the best A

Answer 1

I think that the multifile howto is pretty easy, but as commented, it depends on what you want to achieve or how you organize your contents in the hard disk. Also, you must be aware that some package may not work as expected using subdocuments (before to start a big project, test your approach), but that is the main idea:

1. You want to only split a huge text: Use \input or \include for whole chapters. For some partial previews of books/thesis the also standard \includeonly could be enough. More information in When should I use \input vs. \include?

2. As above, but is very important for you to have instant previews of any subdocument (even sections) where you are working on, without deal with the main file at all: Then each subdocument must be a complete document by itself and use docmute, standalone or sufiles to include them (as incomplete document,i.e., without the preamble) in the main file. For more information just run texdoc docmute and texdoc standalone, etc.

3. You have not only a huge text, but also a lot of images tables or something else that you want organize/store/manage in a hierarchical directory structure. The problem here is that obviously the relative paths of the subdocuments cannot work when included in a document that is another directory. The solution to this problem is to use the package import. It can combine with approach (2) at least with docmute (e.g., my answer in How to organize large documents in small nested folders). More information running texdoc import.

4. You want a collection of independent manuscripts, such as conference proceedings. Then the combine class is an option. Run texdoc combine for more. Also, paper (an article-like class) documents can be combined with the journal class (warning: only German documentation in this case).

Indeed a best practice about any LaTeX task is search for a related topic in CTAN as https://ctan.org/topic/subdocs where there are some other packages for dealing with subdocuments.

Finally, if you are comfortable with Rmarkdown to produce LaTeX documents, then bookdown is an interesting option that cover points 1-3. Briefly, what bookdown make is merge all the sudocuments in a single markdown file and then is exported to LaTeX, so there are no need of special LaTeX packages or LaTeX commands for this. But you can also compile each subdocument as a normal rmarkdown file. If a subdocument not compilable as is, because include commands that need some package or definition loaded elsewhere, you can alwys specify in _bookdown.yml the list of files to compile in the book:

rmd_files: ["abstract.Rmd", "intro.Rmd"]

This make a preview only of the abstract and the introduction without headaches. With bookdown you only have to take care that all path o all files must be relatives to the main project directory.

More recently, Quarto markdown aims to be the sucessor of Rmarkdown and it have almost the same features that bookdown, but the proyect is managed from a _quarto.yml. For instance, if you have a book with four chapters, this file should have the list of these chapters in this way:

  chapters:
    - 01-chapter.qmd 
    - 02-chapter.qmd 
    - 03-chapter.qmd 
    - 04-chapter.qmd   

To make the PDF only with chapter 3, is just reduce the list to:

  chapters:
    - 03-chapter.qmd 

Or better:

  chapters:
    # - 01-chapter.qmd 
    # - 02-chapter.qmd 
    - 03-chapter.qmd 
    # - 04-chapter.qmd   

So you can restore the hidden chapter just removing the # that is the equivalent of % in LaTeX to convert the rest of the line in a comment.