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I am working on a multi-chaptered document, tied together with a main tex file that pulls the chapters in via \include. To build the entire document, in its current draft form, can take upwards of 15-20 minutes, depending on the machine I am working on. I am wondering if there is a way that I could choose to typeset only one specific chapter at a time without having to restructure my whole setup. Any ideas?

Caramdir
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Matthew Ryan Dillon
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    Use \includeonly in the preamble. Done! – Display Name Jan 06 '11 at 16:31
  • 15-20 minutes!? That seems like an awfully long time. What's in this book? – Seamus Jan 06 '11 at 16:37
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    Hah, about 7 gazillion figures. It seems to bog down most when I include the image-heavy chapters. – Matthew Ryan Dillon Jan 06 '11 at 17:01
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    @mrdillion: you do not need to insert all the figures every time! If only text chnages are important use draft as optional argument for the documentclass or alternatively as option for \includegraphics for single big images and change it in a final run to final or simply delete the draft option. –  Jan 06 '11 at 17:06
  • I'd say it's a duplicate of this question, but the title of that question is not really helpful ... – Hendrik Vogt Jan 07 '11 at 14:09
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    @Seamus: The Metafun manual used to take 10-15 minutes to compile with pdftex. But most of the time was spent in generating metapost figures. With luatex, it takes around 3 minutes. – Aditya Mar 28 '11 at 22:17

2 Answers2

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If you are using \include for your chapters, then you can use \includeonly to include just specific chapters.

e.g.

\documentclass{book}
\includeonly{Chap2} % will cause just Chap 2 to be included
\begin{document}
\include{Chap1}
\include{Chap2}
\include{Chap3}

\end{document}
Alan Munn
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    or altenatively also \excludeonly which needs the package of the same name. –  Jan 06 '11 at 16:37
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Include all chapters in the body using \include macro (to make cross references work properly) and specify the chapter to be rendered using \includeonly in the preamble.

Cross references will still work properly even thought you just render only one chapter. 

\documentclass{book}
\includeonly{ch01}
\begin{document}
\include{ch01}
\include{ch02}
\include{ch03}
\end{document}
Display Name
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    You have to run at least one time all chapters to create the auxiliary files. –  Jan 06 '11 at 16:40