Goto or jump command in LaTeX?

Question

The answer to this is probably "no", but I just wanted to make sure... (also, I'm not trying to get into the whole "gotos are evil" debate :)).

Basically, one of the things that irritates me in my current workflow, is that eventually I get to a point where I'm on page 34, and there are a ton of images in the previous 33 pages; so if I get stuck with something on page 34, requiring multiple texing, I have to wait for all of the 33 pages to get done texing first (and this can take a while), before I can see the results of interest.

So I thought, it would have been awesome, if LaTeX (rather, for me currently, pdflatex) supported a sort of a "jump" or "goto" command, which I could use like this:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}

% ...

% probably something like this would be needed - pseudo:
\declareGotoMarker{\myjumplabelA}

\begin{document}

% at this point, I'm not interested in the content from 
% start to page 33 - so I'm issuing a jump command 
% right at the document start:

\JumpGoto{\myjumplabelA}

% here content of skipped pages 

% ...

% here is the label, the tex processor  
% should jump to, and continue from:

\myjumplabelA

\section{My page 34 section}

Here there is some content that I'm texing:

A test: \problemcommand

...

% here is end of the snippet that I care about texing at the moment;
% don't need a jump here - can just use \stop etc to exit prematurely:

\stop

% here content continues, to end of doc;
% but I won't be seeing it in PDF, as I issued 
% \stop just previously: 

\section{My page 45 section}

Here some more content, which I'll eventually tex - but not now...

...

\end{document}

Well, I guess the code speaks for itself - the desired output would be a PDF with the content, corresponding to pg 34-44 of the original document. Obviously page numbers, and page and some of the other (section, equation, etc.) references will not be available/working when doing this kind of "jump"-shortened run, but that is understood without saying; the goal of this is more-less to assist with troublesome snippets in large documents, without the need (or despite it) to separate content in section files, and then commenting the \input lines selectively.

Anything like that within the pdflatex world?

Answer 1

I would load the comment package and use its comment environment.

Place all the code you want to exclude inside the comment environment, that is replace \JumpGoto{\myjumplabelA} with \begin{comment} and \myjumplabelA with \end{comment}.

MWE

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{comment}

\usepackage{lipsum} % only for the example

\begin{document}

This is printed.

\begin{comment}
This is not printed

\lipsum[1-15]
\end{comment}

\section{My page 34 section}

Here there is some content that I'm texing:

\end{document} 

Output

If you then want to print what is inside the comment environment you just have to add the line

\includecomment{comment}

Answer 2

You can use a verbbox to stuff unwanted content into a verbatim box (that is not typeset). To undo it, comment out the \begine{verbbox} and \end{verbbox} commands. Note from the output, though, that the commented comment is as if it never existed, including section divisions, etc.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{verbatimbox}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\section{First}
\begin{verbbox}
\lipsum[1-12]
\section{Second}
\lipsum[1-5]
\end{verbbox}
\section{Third}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Answer 3

Nobody seems to know the package ifthen! Example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\begin{document}
\newcommand{\optionaltext}{1}%
%or: \newcommand{\optionaltext}{0}%
My mandatory text.
\ifthenelse{\equal{\optionaltext}{1}}{%
  Optional line 1.
  Optional line 2.
  etc.
}{}%
Further mandatory text.
\end{document}

Answer 4

When using memmoir class, there is a very useful feature that I find more powerful than what I think I could do with GOTO. See newcomment, commentson, and commentsoff, below.

\documentclass{memoir}%
\newcomment{printme} % declaration
\commentson{printme} % no need to do anything with this line
\newcomment{printtoc} % declaration
\commentson{printtoc} % no need to do anything with this line
\begin{document}
\commentsoff{printme} % <-----   THIS, COMMENT AND UN-COMMENT
%\commentsoff{printtoc} % <-----   THIS, COMMENT AND UN-COMMENT
\begin{printtoc}
\tableofcontents
\end{printtoc}
\begin{printme}
\chapter{Templates Improve Throughput}
Frequently I need the same set of helper commands so I put them in templates below end of document. The pluses and minuses are simply to attract my attention until the final compile. You can have many task-unique print commands. Definitions can be in preamble or main body. These behave decently well with the subfiles package.
\end{printme}
\end{document}
\begin{printme}\let\clearpage\relax ---   +++ \
\end{printme}\par ---   +++    \par
\begin{printtoc}\let\clearpage\relax ---   +++  \
\end{printtoc}\par ---   +++   \par