Chapter 10. Developing Large Documents

The first chapter of this book claimed that LaTeX handles large documents easily. When you create extensive documents, you will notice that LaTeX keeps on doing its job reliably. For the computer, it doesn't matter how the source code is formatted. But for you, as the developer, it's important to keep your source document manageable. After all, it may consist of hundreds of pages with thousands of lines, possibly containing a lot of external pictures.

In this chapter, we shall learn how to:

• Split a document into several files

• Input and reuse pieces of code

• Swap out document-wide settings

• Compile just a part of a document

• Create a main document built upon sub-files

A bigger document requires a more complex structure, so we shall figure out how to:

• Design a title page

• Use Roman page numbers in the front matter

• Add a back matter without sectioning numbers

We will work it out while developing a book, using separate files for the preamble and for each chapter.

Bigger...