NAME

       lacheck - A consistency checker for LaTeX documents.

SYNOPSIS

       lacheck filename [ .tex ]

DESCRIPTION

       LaCheck  is  a  general purpose consistency checker for LaTeX documents.  It reads a LaTeX
       document and displays warning messages, if it finds bad sequences.  It  should  be  noted,
       that  the badness is very subjective.  LaCheck is designed to help find common mistakes in
       LaTeX documents, especially those made by beginners.

       The things checked are:

       Mismatched groups (braces), environments and math mode delimiters.   When  a  mismatch  is
       found,  line  numbers  for both start and end of the mismatch is given. The error messages
       comes in pairs, one for the end match and one for the beginning, marked with `<-´ and `->´
       respectively.

       Bad  spacing  including  missing  a  `\  ´ after an abbreviation, missing an `\@´ before a
       punctuation mark in a paragraph that is ended by an capital letter, double spaces  like  `
       ´,  bad  usage of ellipsis (like using ... instead of \ldots, or using \ldots where \cdots
       should be used), missing   before a \cite or \ref commands, space before footnotes, italic
       corrections  before  comma,  point,  or  italic text, italic correction after normal text,
       missing italic correction when switching from italic to normal  text,  and  double  italic
       correction.

       Badly  placed  punctuation  marks around end of math mode delimiters. This is, punctuation
       placed right after display math end or punctuation placed  right  before  text  math  end.
       Sequences of whitespace followed by punctuation marks are also caught.

       Bad use of quotation characters, i.e. constructs like "´word" or "word`" are warned about,
       tabs in verbatim environments  are  caught,  certain  TeX  primitives  are  frowned  upon,
       attempts  to  give  font specifiers arguments such as \em{text} are noted, and use of @ in
       LaTeX macros are reported.

       LaCheck will read files that are input using \input or \include.  Files with suffix `.sty´
       are omitted, as they probably will cause LaCheck to crash.

       LaCheck may be invoked from within Emacs(1) using compile:

       To run: M-x compile RET lacheck RET , and then C-x ` to parse the messages

OUTPUT

       The  output  is  UNIX-error like, and may be parsed using Emacs(1) compile mode. Here is a
       sample:

       lacheck compiler
       "/usr/mef/compiler.tex", line 34: missing `\\\\ ´ after "etc."
       "/usr/mef/compiler.tex", line 179: double space at " ~"
       "/usr/mef/compiler.tex", line 186: <- unmatched "}"
       "/usr/mef/compiler.tex", line 181: -> unmatched "$$"

       A control space `\ ´ should be inserted at line 34, to prevent an  end-of-sentence  space.
       Also,  at  line 179, the first space of the sequence " ~" should probably be deleted.  The
       last two lines is an example, where the user mistyped, and probably inserted an extra  "}"
       somewhere.

DIAGNOSTICS

       Some special cases should be explained. In cases where a sentence ends with something that
       LaCheck thinks is an abbreviation an missing `\ ´ error may also occur, if  the  following
       sentence begins with a lowercase letter.

       A mismatch error may cause more to follow, due to the chosen algorithm. In such cases just
       correct the first error and run LaCheck again

       Braces, environments and math mode must be balanced within a file.

       LaCheck may be confused by unmatched stuff placed inside verbatim-like environments called
       something else than exactly `verbatim´.

FILES

       /usr/bin/lacheck

SEE ALSO

       tex(1), emacs(1), latex(1)

BUGS

       LaCheck  gets confused by advanced macros, is fooled by simple macros, can't figure out if
       you use a non-standard way to switch italic on or off, does not like TeX at all, does  not
       provide any options to turn off specific warnings, and is at best a crude approximation.

       Ideas  for  improvements and bug reports are very welcome.  Such should be directed to the
       maintainers, their email address is <auc-tex_mgr@sunsite.auc.dk>.

AUTHOR

       Kresten Krab Thorup with modifications by Per Abrahamsen.