detex

DETEX(1)                    General Commands Manual                   DETEX(1)

NAME
       detex - a filter to strip TeX commands from a .tex file.

SYNOPSIS
       detex [ -clnstw ] [ -e environment-list ] [ filename[.tex] ... ]

DESCRIPTION
       Detex (Version 2.8.3) reads each file in sequence, removes all comments
       and TeX control sequences and writes the remainder on the standard out-
       put.   All  text in math mode and display mode is removed.  By default,
       detex follows \input commands.  If a file cannot be opened,  a  warning
       message  is  printed  and  the command is ignored.  If the -n option is
       used, no \input or \include commands will be  processed.   This  allows
       single file processing.  If no input file is given on the command line,
       detex reads from standard input.

       If the magic sequence ``\begin{document}'' appears in the  text,  detex
       assumes it is dealing with LaTeX source and detex recognizes additional
       constructs used in LaTeX.  These include the \include and  \includeonly
       commands.  The -l option can be used to force LaTeX mode and the -t op-
       tion can be used to force TeX mode regardless of input content.

       Text in various environment modes of LaTeX  is  ignored.   The  default
       modes  are  array,  eqnarray, equation, longtable, picture, tabular and
       verbatim.  The -e option can be used to specify a comma separated envi-
       ronment-list of environments to ignore.  The list replaces the defaults
       so specifying an empty list effectively causes no  environments  to  be
       ignored.

       The  -c  option  can be used in LaTeX mode to have detex echo the argu-
       ments to \cite, \ref, and \pageref macros.  This  can  be  useful  when
       sending the output to a style checker.

       Detex  assumes  the  standard character classes are being used for TeX.
       Detex allows white space between control sequences and magic characters
       like `{' when recognizing things like LaTeX environments.

       The  -r  option  tries to naively replace $..$, $$..$$,  and with nouns
       and verbs (in particular, "noun" and "verbs") in a way that keeps  sen-
       tences readable.

       If  the -w flag is given, the output is a word list, one `word' (string
       of two or more letters and apostrophes beginning  with  a  letter)  per
       line,  and all other characters ignored.  Without -w the output follows
       the original, with the deletions mentioned above.   Newline  characters
       are  preserved where possible so that the lines of output match the in-
       put as closely as possible.

       The TEXINPUTS environment variable is used to find \input and  \include
       files.   Like  TeX,  it interprets a leading or trailing `:' as the de-
       fault TEXINPUTS.  It does not  support  the  `//'  directory  expansion
       magic sequence.

       Detex  now handles the basic TeX ligatures as a special case, replacing
       the ligatures with acceptable charater  substitutes.   This  eliminates
       spelling  errors introduced by merely removing them.  The ligatures are
       \aa, \ae, \oe, \ss, \o, \l (and  their  upper-case  equivalents).   The
       special  "dotless"  characters \i and \j are also replaced with i and j
       respectively.

       Note that previous versions of detex would  replace  control  sequences
       with  a  space  character to prevent words from running together.  How-
       ever, this caused accents in the middle of words to break words, gener-
       ating  "spelling  errors"  that were not desirable.  Therefore, the new
       version merely removes these accents.  The old functionality can be es-
       sentially duplicated by using the -s option.

SEE ALSO
       tex(1)

DIAGNOSTICS
       Nesting  of  \input  is allowed but the number of opened files must not
       exceed the system's limit on the number of simultaneously opened files.
       Detex  ignores  unrecognized option characters after printing a warning
       message.

AUTHOR
       Originally written by Daniel Trinkle, Computer Science Department, Pur-
       due University

       Maintained by Piotr Kubowicz <https://github.com/pkubowicz/opendetex>.

BUGS
       Detex  is not a complete TeX interpreter, so it can be confused by some
       constructs.  Most errors result in too much rather than too little out-
       put.

       Running  LaTeX  source without a ``\begin{document}'' through detex may
       produce errors.

       Suggestions for improvements are (mildly) encouraged.

Purdue University               12 August 1993                        DETEX(1)