LaTeX Subfigs Combiner

Python script for combining LaTeX figures composed of subfigures

What

This package provides a simple Python script for combining LaTeX figures composed of subfigures into single PDF files, i.e. one PDF per composite figure.

Why

If you have ever tried to publish on scientific journals, you have probably encountered at least one journal that either does not accept LaTeX subfigures or will combine your composite figures during production with a very high chance of making a mess (both scenarios are completely unreasonable, but yet they happen sometimes). Of course, you really like those shiny composite LaTeX figures and do not want to waste time painstakingly stitching them together by hand (e.g. using Inkscape). This Python script provides an hands-free automated solution to this problem.

How

The job is done by parsing the given TeX file, extracting the preamble, setting the page style to empty, extracting the figure environments that contain subfigures, compiling to a PDF via latexmk, and then crop each figure to a separate PDF file using pdfcrop.

Installation

Easy peasy via pip or equivalent

pip install latex-subfigs-combiner

Usage

In a terminal, simply run combine-subfigs on your LaTeX main file

combine-subfigs /path/to/my/awesome/paper.tex

This will produce all the composite figures in a directory named composite-figures at the location you called the script from.

By default, the output figures will be named as fig_1.pdf, fig_2.pdf, etc. If you want to change the output directory or the filename prefix fig_ of the figures, you can use the optional arguments --target_dir and --prefix, respectively. Execute combine-subfigs -h for more details.

Tips are welcomed! :love_you_gesture:

If you found this useful, feel free to offer me a beer :beer: via PayPal or send me a few sats :zap:.