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.