General ⇒ merging LATEX files into one LATEX file (not a PDF or othe

[akaplan1]

Hi folks; I am new to the forum, and in general more of a dumb user than an expert.
I am submitting a new paper to the arXiv, and I have TWO LATEX files, while they require only ONE LATEX file. So I need to merge my files into one -- but it's got to be a LATEX file. So regular commands like "\include" or "\input" don't work for me for they would generate as an output only PDF of GS merged files. I failed to find an appropriate recipe; can anybody help me? I work with ubuntu LINUX, 13.1 I believe...
Thanks,
Alex

[StarValkyrie]

Okay, let's just rule out the obvious first - presumably you can't just cut and paste, perhaps because the two are different document classes?

[akaplan1]

Okay, let's just rule out the obvious first - presumably you can't just cut and paste, perhaps because the two are different document classes?

Correct, they are of different classes; sorry for not mentioning it before.

[Johannes_B]

Hi and welcome,
two documentclass? Now my question: Why? We might lead you to alternatives, but we have to know what is going on.

From the top of my head, i would suggest compiling one file and inputting the resulting pdf in the document. Not sure, if this would be ok with arXiv tough.

Another thing is always the filecontents-environment writing it's contents to a file at run time.

[akaplan1]

Hi and welcome,
two documentclass? Now my question: Why? We might lead you to alternatives, but we have to know what is going on.

From the top of my head, i would suggest compiling one file and inputting the resulting pdf in the document. Not sure, if this would be ok with arXiv tough.

Another thing is always the filecontents-environment writing it's contents to a file at run time.

Johannes, thanks.
> compiling one file and inputting the resulting pd
Well, of course I can simply produce two PDF files and then just merge them, by using any PDF-merging command, e. g. pdfunite. I've done that, and submitted to arXive. They wrathfully rejected it -- no PDF generated from LATEX is for them... I expect the same problem with Phys. Rev. Lett.

> the filecontents-environment writing
Well, I am afraid you are talking over my head. It might be helpful if you were a bit more specific... Frankly, the entire LATEX thing is a bit foreign to me; I came from "troff" and UNIX -- you have a dinosaur here...

Once again -- I need a merged file to be again a full blown LATEX, whatever the procedure might be called.

[Johannes_B]

Please copy the following and run it using pdflatex
-shell-escape. It includes another document using
filecontents, compiles this document and later includes it using
package pdfpages.

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname-external.tex}
	\documentclass{article}
	\usepackage{showframe}
	\begin{document}
	\Huge I am the external document
	\clearpage
	I am on the next page.
	\end{document}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
%The following line is just for demonstration and should in
%general not be done
\immediate\write18{pdflatex \jobname-external}
\begin{document}
I am an article using documentclass \texttt{scrartcl} and i can
include pdf files using package \texttt{pdfpages}.
\includepdf[pages=-]{\jobname-external.pdf}
This again is the \emph{mother} document. Did you notice the
different page sizes?
\end{document}

Please note that filecontents is a very basic command. As a UNIX
user, you should be familiar with reading documentation and
finding stuff LaTeX is about 30 years old, the recent kernel is
in place for 20 years. One might say this is a bit of history on
it's own.

[akaplan1]

Johannes, great thanks!
Will start working on it right away. The way I understand it at the moment, is that I
do the first file as a "regular" LATEX file, and as a next step include another one
-- this time a PDF-file. If this is true, I suspect I'll get kicked out by arXiv (they
hate PDF in any form or shape), but at least I'll learn a new trick
Thanks again.

[Johannes_B]

two documentclass? Now my question: Why? We might lead you to alternatives, but we have to know what is going on.

Hi, you still haven't given us a simple clue on what the different files are. There might be a super simple solution to this.

[Johannes_B]

The explanation: the filecontents environment writes its content to a file specified in the argument, in this case \jobname-external.tex (basenameOfYourMainFile-external.tex). You can write any text you want to a file, scientific data, bibliogrphies ...

This file is later compiled by pdflatex through the line immediate\write18{pdflatex \jobname-external}.

The generated pdf is included in the document using package pdfpages. You can include any pdf document.