File	Date	Author	Commit
.gitignore	2014-03-22	Zhihua Ma	[351927] Second commit, Readme drafted
Readme	2014-03-22	Zhihua Ma	[87d8c5] Readme revised
latexprocess.py	2014-03-22	Zhihua Ma	[b42f47] First commit

Read Me

This simple python program is designed to process a LaTeX project.

Some LaTeX users like to store each section or chapter in an individual source
file and use "\input{}" or "\include{}" command to have them in the master
source file. They also like to store graphic files in different descendant
directories. This is a very common way to manage a LaTeX project, which can be
a book, report or paper to be submitted to a scientific journal. Many journals'
online submission systems require a single whole latex document not multiple
source files. Some journals even require you to name the graphic file based on 
its occurrence in the paper. If you have many chapters/sections and figures in
your paper, you will find it is really painful to paste every chapter/section
into the master document and rename all the figures as requested. More often,
you need to add more figures to the paper or delete some, when you need to
revise your paper. This will be more painful than the first submission. 

I encounter this problem several times when I submitted my paper to some
journals. Every time, I did the tedious work by hand and feel really
unhappy. So I decide to find a way to automatically do this work without much
pain. I realise that Python is very useful and simple to deal with strings and
text files. Therefore, I spent several days to learn Python and wrote a program
to process my LaTeX project.

This is my first version of the program latexprocess.
        print "  This program assembles a latex project to the folder pythonProcess"
        print "\t 1) combine multiple source files into a single source file masterFull.tex"
        print "\t 2) copy the scattered graphics and media files to pythonProcess"
        print "\t 3) copy the documentclass, bibliographystyle and bib files to pythonProcess"
        print "\t 4) rename the graphics files based their occurrence"
        print "\t 5) update the graphics and media files with correct names"
        print "\t 6) compile the latex project to generate a PDF and clean temporary files"
        print "  It provides several options to users"
        print "\t A) the source latex project file"
        print "\t B) select between latex or pdflatex model"
        print "\t C) choose to compile the project or not"
        print "\t D) choose to compress the assembled project or not"

To use this program to process your latex files is very easy.
0) Make sure you have installed python on your computer.
1) copy latexprocess.py to your latex project directory.
2) execute the program with command "python latexprocess.py"
3) it will list all the latex files in the directory, you need to choose one of
   them
4) select latex or pdflatex to compile the source file
5) choose to compile or not compile your latex project
6) choose to compress the project or not

All the generate files will be stored in the directory pythonProcess.


Known bugs:
1) If more than two latex keywords are on the same line, for example 
     \documentclass, \includegraphics, \includemovie, \bibliographystyle, \bibliography
   if you have any two of these command on the same line in the source file,
   you will get an error.
2) \includegraphics[option]{figure}, this command should be finished within just one
   text line. If you seperate it into two lines like
     \includegraphics[option]
       {figure-A}
       you will get an error.
3) \includemovie[option]{width}{height}{figure}, this command should be finished
   within just text line. If you seperate it into two lines like
     \includemovie[option]{width}{height}
       {figure-A}
   you will get an error.
4) Two \includegraphics commands cannot be on the same line.
5) Two \includemovie    commands cannot be on the same line.


Warning:
  If your original latex project cannot be compiled successfully by yourself, 
  my program will not make it correct.