A pdfLATEX-based automated journal production system

We present the recent development of a production system for mathematical serials with both an electronic and paper version. The challenges were many: (i) no house style layout should be imposed, as the journals come from different publishing houses and may have very different typographical options; (ii) produce screen-optimised and printer-friendly output at once; (iii) avoid any duplication of information so that all aspects of the publications are always in sync (Web site metadata, table of contents. . . ), thus (iv) generate on the fly article’s page numbers, XML metadata at the published volume level from one master LATEX source file tree. Using available technology (pdflatex, pdfpages.sty and \write18), the proposed solution to these problems appeared amazingly simple and easy to use. However, we’ll show that there is quite some room left for improvement.