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LaCheck(1)		    General Commands Manual		    LaCheck(1)

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 `->' respec-
       tively.

       Bad spacing including missing a `\ ' after an abbreviation, missing  an
       `\@' before a punctuation mark in a paragraph that is ended by an capi-
       tal  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  correc-
       tion  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	speci-
       fiers 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 M-x 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 lack of good er-
       ror recovery. 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'.

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; please email tex-live@tug.org.

AUTHOR
       Kresten	Krab  Thorup  with modifications by Per	Abrahamsen.  Currently
       maintained as part of TeX Live (https://tug.org/texlive).

Release	1.30 (TeX Live)		  2019-07-09			    LaCheck(1)

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