LaCheck(1) 11LACHECKREV11 LaCheck(1)
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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
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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
%%LACHECKPATH%%
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@iesd.auc.dk>.
AUTHOR
Kresten Krab Thorup with modifications by Per Abrahamsen.
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