NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       Detex  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  -1  option will prefix each printed line with `filename:linenumber:` indicating where
       that line is coming from in terms of the original (La)TeX document.

       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  character  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 TeX interpreter (it essentially reads the input with a (f)lex program),  so
       it  is  easily 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.