arlatex(1) User Commands arlatex(1)
NAME
arlatex - archive a number of ancillary LaTeX files into a master .tex
file
SYNOPSIS
arlatex [--outfile=filename.tex] --document=filename.tex filename ...
arlatex --version
arlatex --help
DESCRIPTION
arlatex is an archiving program like shar, tar, zip, etc. Unlike those
other archivers, however, arlatex is designed specifically for use with
LaTeX. arlatex takes the name of a master .tex file and a number of
ancillary files used by that master file (e.g., .tex, .sty, .cls, and
.eps files). From these, arlatex outputs a single file that, when it's
run through latex, both regenerates the ancillary files and compiles
the document into a .dvi file.
arlatex has a few advantages over other archiving programs:
o The .tex files produced by arlatex are in a plain-text format.
They are therefore perfectly portable and trivial to e-mail to
colleagues.
o arlatex needs only LaTeX to run. There is no dependence on any
external tools.
o There is no explicit extraction step. As the generated document is
run through latex, it extracts the ancillary files and builds the
document in the same step. The user running latex may not even
notice that additional files are being produced.
arlatex works by writing a number of "\begin{filecontents*}" ...
"\end{filecontents*}" blocks to the output file, followed by the
contents of the master file. (In fact, any LaTeX comments at the
beginning of the master file are hoisted to the top of the generated
file. This enables the author to draw attention, if so desired, to the
fact that ancillary files will be generated.) The "filecontents*"
environment, part of standard LaTeX2e, writes its contents verbatim to
a specified file.
OPTIONS
--version
Output the arlatex script's version number.
--help
Output brief arlatex usage information.
--document=.tex file
Specify the master document. The output from arlatex is this file
with all of the other files named on the command line prepended to
it. Note that "--document" is a mandatory parameter; arlatex will
abort with an error message if "--document" is not specified.
--outfile=.tex file
Specify the output file. The output file looks just like the
master document, but with a number of "filecontents*" environments
preceding the "\documentclass" line. If "--outfile" is not
specified, output will be written to the standard output device.
EXAMPLES
Suppose you have a paper called paper.tex that loads a custom package
with "\usepackage{mypackage}". You want to submit the paper to a
conference, but you want to be absolutely certain that mypackage.sty
doesn't get lost as your paper is shuttled from person to person.
Here's how arlatex can be of use:
arlatex --document=paper.tex mypackage.sty --outfile=paper-submit.tex
When paper-submit.tex is processed with latex, it builds just like the
original paper.tex, except that it additionally creates a mypackage.sty
in the current directory:
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
(paper-submit.tex
LaTeX2e <1999/12/01> patch level 1
Babel <v3.6Z> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german,
ngerman, italian, nohyphenation, loaded.
LaTeX Warning: Writing file `./mypackage.sty'.
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 1999/09/10 v1.4a Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (mypackage.sty)
.
.
.
As another example, here's how you could bundle together all of the
files needed to build a large document for longevity:
arlatex --document=thesis.tex abstract.tex introduction.tex
background.tex approach.tex experiments.tex relatedwork.tex
conclusions.tex before.eps after.eps fast.eps slow.eps
podunkUthesis.cls --outfile=thesis-all.tex
As the number of files to archive together increases it becomes more
cumbersome to run arlatex manually. Fortunately, using arlatex with
bundledoc is straightforward. bundledoc finds all of the files needed
to build the document, and arlatex combines them into a single file.
The following are examples of the "bundle:" line you might use in a
bundledoc configuration file:
Unix:
bundle: (arlatex --document=$BDBASE.tex $BDINPUTS \
--outfile=$BDBASE-all.tex)
Windows:
bundle: arlatex --document=%BDBASE%.tex %BDINPUTS% \
--outfile=%BDBASE%-all.tex
See the bundledoc documentation for more information.
CAVEATS
arlatex makes use of LaTeX2e's "filecontents*" environment.
"filecontents*" refuses to overwrite an existing file. However, it
also refuses to create a file that exists anywhere that LaTeX can find
it. That is, if the user running latex on an arlatex-generated .tex
file already has a /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/whatever/whatever.sty
file then "filecontents*" will refuse to create a whatever.sty file,
even in a different directory.
SEE ALSO
bundledoc(1), latex(1), shar(1), tar(1), zip(1)
AUTHOR
Scott Pakin, scott+bdoc@pakin.org
v1.03 2018-05-23 arlatex(1)
texlive-bin-extra 54586 - Generated Wed Jul 15 15:56:53 CDT 2020