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 output.  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 option 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
       environment-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 arguments 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 sentences 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 input 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 default 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.  However, this caused accents  in  the  middle  of  words  to  break  words,
       generating  "spelling  errors"  that were not desirable.  Therefore, the new version merely removes these
       accents.  The old functionality can be essentially 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, Purdue 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 output.

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

       Suggestions for improvements are (mildly) encouraged.