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. | 
