LaTeX forum ⇒ General ⇒ Extracting sections from a large document into a database

[jd6]

Hi,
I have been compiling a compendium of published studies on off and on for the past 25 years. The latest version is here. It is becoming a bit unmanageable (700 pages and hundreds of studies cited). It is fiddly to add new studies so I was looking for a better way of updating the LaTeX files but without having to start from stratch.

Is there a means of semi-automatically converting a LaTeX file into a simple database (one entry per section, for example)? Then from the database a way of putting the document back together from the individual parts. I have seen DataTex, which appears to do the second part but not the first.

Thanks for your suggestions.

John

[mas]

In principle, it should be possible. Without looking at how you have structured your LaTeX file, it is difficult to guess. If you are adding new citations (only), biber/biblatex may serve the purpose.

Please post a snippet of your tex file, and let suggestions come in.

[jd6]

Thanks for the reply.

The document is composed of a handful of.tex files with a master.tex file that puts them together using include statements.

The main files of the content are large files comprising sections with titles that are bibtex citations, eg:

\section{\citet{test}}

Then a set of \item with the summary of that study.

There are some large tables with information on each reference too.

The issue is that adding new sections is a bit slow with a very large.tex file and also I would like the sections to be in date and alphabetical order that requires some work as I find studies in a random order.

Thanks