Re: [tip] org-publish to work with (very) large books

["Juan Manuel Macías" <maciaschain@posteo.net>]

Ihor Radchenko writes:

> A more advanced approach would be using
> \include + \includeonly instead of \input:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160627050806/http://www.howtotex.com/tips-tricks/faster-latex-part-i-compile-only-parts/

Yeah, \include and \includeonly save the .aux files for each part.
However, I think choosing between \input, \include or \includeonly is
not the important part here. I usually use \input for convenience,
because I have not needed in the work done to make references between
parts. You can choose any of the options, according to needs. Also this
procedure can be made more complex. For example, sometimes (when it
comes to a bilingual edition with facing pages), I also start from
precompiled documents together with tex (subdocument) files. The
precompiled documents are placed on the odd and even pages of the
bilingual part:

https://i.imgur.com/Jbjutmf.jpg

> Also, FYI:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160712215709/http://www.howtotex.com:80/tips-tricks/faster-latex-part-iv-use-a-precompiled-preamble/

Using a precompiled preamble can improve compilation sometimes, but
other times it's not worth it. Also, I use a lot of code in Lua. When it
comes to a very complex preamble, with lots of code, it is usually more
practical to create a .sty file (that is, a package, in LaTeX parlance).
The difference is that I prefer to use org and org-babel-tangle instead
of the 'official' LaTeX suite docstript for writing packages, which I
find horribly hard, especially compared to the ease of Org :-)

Improving performance and compile time in TeX is an old topic, and there
are a few tricks here and there. But TeX is what Emacs is, both are
venerably old; and both are single-thread. There are more ''modern''
approaches, like Patoline or Sile (of course, based heavily on TeX,
which is the father of everything). Sile, especially, is very
interesting and from time to time I like to play with it. The problem
with these new projects is that they don't have the LaTeX package
ecosystem, and they are poorly documented. Well, Sile in particular is
the work of a single person. Links:

https://patoline.github.io/#documentation

https://sile-typesetter.org/

As for LuaTeX, which is the state of the art today in the TeX ecosystem,
it is nothing more than TeX + a lua interpreter + the implementation of
advanced features from previous engines like pdfTeX and the experimental
Omega/Alef. It has the advantage that it is a scriptable TeX (TeX
primitives can be controlled by Lua scripts, and truly amazing things[1]
can be achieved with very little effort[2]); it has the disadvantage that
the scripting language is Lua. The ideal would have been a Lisp-TeX ;-)

[1] The chickenize package contains many examples, some of them somewhat
absurd and not very useful in
appearance: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/chickenize

[2] https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb31-3/tb99isambert.pdf

>> The moment one breaks down a large piece of work into specialized parts,
>> one gains more control over that piece of work. And org-publish helps
>> manage all of that. It is about managing a large book as a website (via
>> org-publish). In short, the combination of org-publish, projectile and
>> latexmk is quite productive for me in this type of work.
>
> This is a bit confusing. You still keep the book in a single giant Org
> file. It indeed does not mean anything given that we can always narrow
> to subtree, but I fail to see where you break the book into specialized
> parts then (LaTeX performance trickery aside).

I think this is inaccurate. The book is split across multiple
subdocuments. The master file is just the 'outline' of the book.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel