Force a maximum number of pages in LaTeX

Question

Is there a way to give LaTeX a hint on the maximum number of pages I would like the document to have, so LaTeX at least tries to not exceed this maximum if possible?

Answer 1

While you can't make a "suggested" page length, you can enforce a page limit where any pages past the limit will not print. Here's an example of a command you can create in your preamble to do this:

\makeatletter
\newcounter{pagecount}
\newcommand{\limitpages}[1]{
    \setcounter{pagecount}{0}%
    \gdef\maxpages{#1}%
    \ifx\latex@outputpage\@undefined\relax%
        \global\let\latex@outputpage\@outputpage%
    \fi%
    \gdef\@outputpage{%
        \addtocounter{pagecount}{1}%
        \ifnum\value{pagecount}>\maxpages\relax%
            % Do not output the page
        \else%
            \latex@outputpage%
        \fi%
    }%
}
\makeatother

Answer 2

No. LaTeX optimizes text at page level but not document level. So there is no way to automatically squeeze the text into a maximum number of pages. However, there are lots of ways to squeeze things in order to reduce the number of pages. See this blog post on "Squeezing space with LaTeX".