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AutoLaTeX: how to automatize LaTeX compilation

AutoLaTeX is a tool for managing small to large sized LaTeX projects. The typical AutoLaTeX input file is simply a series of variable definitions in a Makefile for the project. This Makefile was automatically generated by a provided Perl script. The user can easily perform all required steps to do such tasks as: preview the document, or produce a PDF file. AutoLaTeX will keep track of files that have changed and how to run the various programs that are needed to produce the output. One of the best feature of AutoLaTeX is to provide translation rules to automatically generate the figures which will be included into the PDF.

As a quick example, consider a project which has a single LaTeX file, code>mydoc.tex, as its input. To produce a PDF file you might use the following sequence of commands:

$> pdflatex mydoc.tex

$> bibtex mydoc.tex

$> pdflatex mydoc.tex

$> pdflatex mydoc.tex

$> pdflatex mydoc.tex

The triple invocation of LaTeX is to ensure that all references have been properly resolved and any page layout changes due to inserting the references have been accounted for. The sequence of commands isn’t horrible, but it still is several commands. To use AutoLaTeX for this project, you would use the command line:

$> autolatex -f mydoc.tex

Note that the Makefile file is automaticaly generated into the current directory. For larger projects which may need to run programs to export drawings to Postscript files for inclusion or run BibTeX to generate bibliographies, the generation of .pdf (or other) files becomes increasingly complicated to run manually. With AutoLaTeX, such operations are still very simple: you have nothing to do.

Hopefully this introduction has provided an adequate example for how AutoLaTeX can simplify the management of LaTeX based documents. The AutoLaTeX system is simple enough for small projects and powerful enough for large projects.

AutoLaTeX is provided in several packages:

• autolatex: an empty package that depends on all the other packages;
• autolatex-core: the AutoLaTeX core implementation;
• autolatex-dia: Dia (.dia) converter;
• autolatex-dot: Graphviz (.dot) converter;
• autolatex-dot: GNU Plot (.plot) converter;
• autolatex-gtk: GTK interface to configure AutoLaTeX;
• autolatex-dot: Compressed image (.gz) converter;
• autolatex-sty: LaTeX style which is providing usefull macros;
• autolatex-svg-inkscape: SVG converter based on Inkscape;
• autolatex-xfig: (X/Trans)fig (.fig) converter;
• autolatex-xmi-umbrello: UML (.xmi) converter based on Umbrello;
• autolatex-xmi-uml2svg: UML (.xmi) converter based on uml2svg;
• autolatex-xmi-xmi2svg: UML (.xmi) converter based on xmi2svg.