[texhax] Article like class file for authors and book like class file for a journal issue.

[William F Hammond]

> We tend to use templates with most common packages in the
> field, kindly ask the authors not to use any home made
> macros, plus some extra macros to format titles etc.
>
> Then in assembly, we use docmute to ignore any preambles
> and redefine the title and author macros. The each article
> is included in the master.
>
> It does take some work to get everyone to comply to the
> guidelines, but it works just fine.
>
> For the bibliographies one can use chapterbib.
>
> One thing to look out for is labels. Having full control
> over the packages used, makes it simpler to automatically
> prefix all labels. It is doable, but not easy.

Yes, and many journals work this way.  But juggling actual
LaTeX this way is indeed not easy.  LaTeX profiles, on the
other hand, are fully amenable to robust processing by
SGML/XML libraries.  Once the code for a journal's handlers
under such a library for a given profile and a given end
is correct, no human intervention at all should be required.

The hard part will be persuading authors to use suitable
profiles, and persuading them to use profile validators
before submitting their articles.

                              -- Bill