>   For example, if you just want to print one article of a journal issue.
> But it seems me that this idea with turning off the typeset output
> (mentioned in Knuth's TeX-book) would be a simple solution, that is,
> relatively easy to implement with reliable output results.

You can't "not produce output" and even approach replicating the
effects of \include and \includeonly

The settings of labels and so on are part of the output process, so
all relevant labels will get lost by such a process.

Robin