New on CTAN: mylatexformat

CTAN Announcements ctan-ann at dante.de
Thu Apr 29 08:49:13 CEST 2010


as i lay abed, groaning, the daemon was up and about, and wrote:

> The following information was provided by the package's contributor.
> 
> Name of contribution: mylatexformat
> Author's name: Florent CHERVET
> Location on CTAN: macros/latex/contrib/mylatexformat
> Summary description: Use mylatexformat.ltx to make a format based on the preamble of any LaTeX file
> License type: lppl
> 
> Announcement text given by the package's contributor:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Use mylatexformat.ltx to make a format based on the preamble
> of any LaTeX file.
> 
> The use of formats helps to speed up compilations: packages 
> which have been
> dumped in the format are loaded at very high speed. This is 
> useful when a
> document load many packages (pgf-TikZ among other...)
> 
> For the creation of the format use a command line like:
> 
> etex -initialize [opts] "&pdflatex" mylatexformat.ltx 
> """abc.tex"""
> 
> mylatexformat.ltx has been primarily written from 
> mylatex.ltx
> (available on CTAN under the contrib/Carlisle/ directory) 
> but
> gets rid of many limitations or problems of mylatex.ltx.
> 
> More precisely:
> 
> - The format is created from the beginning of the file 
> (usually
>   \documentclass[...]{...}
>   until either:
>          ~ \begin{document}
>          ~ \endofdump
>                 if \endofdump is encountered in the preamble
>          ~ \csname endofdump\endcsname
>                 for convenience: to avoid `undefined control 
> sequence'
>                 in case the document is compiled without the 
> format.
> 
> - \begin{document} \endofdump or \csname endofdump\endcsname
>   can be precedeed or followed by other macros or 
> commentaries.
> 
> - Commentaries in the preamble are ignored (braces are not 
> required
>   to be equilibrated).
> 
> - packages that modify the \document macro (like auxhook.sty 
> or
>   etoolbox.sty) can be included in the format.
> 
> - A report is available in the .log file.
> 
> I have been using mylatexformat.ltx with MikTeX under:
>     - pdfTeX in dvi mode
>     - pdfTeX in pdf mode
>     - XeTeX
> 
> Comments about its use on other system are welcome !        
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

(whew!)

i've installed the new package and created an entry in the catalogue
repository for it; thanks for the upload.

> Users may view the package catalogue entry at
>   http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/mylatexformat.html
> or they may browse the package directory at
>   http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/mylatexformat

but the catalogue entry won't appear until some time tonight.

Robin Fairbairns

For the CTAN team



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