For a different approach, you could make this kind of an emacs script. I have not done this too often, and it can be tricky to setup and debug.
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle export-org-section :shebang #!/bin/sh :;exec emacs -batch -l ~/Dropbox/kitchingroup/jmax/init.el -l "$0" "$@" ;; usage: export-org-section section-id org-file ;; now goto, narrow and export the section (let ((section-id (pop command-line-args-left)) (org-file (pop command-line-args-left))) (print (format "Opened %s" org-file)) (find-file (expand-file-name org-file)) (org-open-link-from-string (format "[[#%s]]" section-id)) (org-narrow-to-subtree) (org-latex-export-to-pdf) ) #+END_SRC #+BEGIN_SRC sh :results silent rm -f blog.pdf ./export-org-section sec-2 blog.org open blog.pdf #+END_SRC I adapted this from here: http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2014/08/06/Writing-scripts-in-Emacs-lisp/ and here: http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2014/08/11/Using-org-mode-outside-of-Emacs-sort-of/ j Alan Schmitt writes: > On 2015-02-05 08:27, "Charles C. Berry" <ccbe...@ucsd.edu> writes: > >> On Thu, 5 Feb 2015, Alan Schmitt wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> >>> I'm teaching a class where I have a big monolithic file for all the >>> lectures. Right now I export each lecture as a subtree from the file >>> itself, but I would like to do it from a Makefile. Is it possible to >>> export a subtree from the command line? if so, how do I specify the >>> subtree that I want? >> >> Use an ID property for the subtree. >> >> A small *.el file can set prereqs, find the subtree from the ID, and >> call up the exporter. >> >> `make test' does something like this. If you look at >> testing/lisp/test-ob.el, testing/examples/babel.org, and the >> testing/*.el files you can see some of this in action. > > Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I'll give it a try. > > Alan -- Professor John Kitchin Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 @johnkitchin http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu