[TriLUG] LaTeX gurus: is it possible to ignore lines on 'include'

[Douglas Kojetin]

I figured I'd send this out to the local LaTeX gurus out there (many 
thanks for all the previous help!).

I'm starting to develop a skeleton for my dissertation text.  I plan on 
having a main document that sources my chapter files (using 
'\include{chapter1}', etc.) so as to keep the main file relatively 
small.  I'd like to be able to just work with the chapter files 
individually as I'm working on them, but every once and a while I'd 
like to be able to compile the entire document to see how it all looks.

This is where I foresee (and have seen) problems.  I have document 
formatting statements at the beginning of the chapter files that, upon 
compilation of the entire document (where main.tex uses the \include 
command to source the chapters), I get the obvious errors due to the 
document formatting lines appearing after \begin{document} in the main 
tex file.

Is there a way to comment or ... format, somehow ... the 
document/usepackage(s) in the chapter files so they *are* sourced when 
the individual files are typeset but *not* sourced when the entire 
document is typeset (i.e. upon sourcing a file, it would ignore any 
document/usepackage information)?

If it matters, I'm using TeXShop.

Many thanks (again)!
Doug