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  docu-
       ments, 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
       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 
ef 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, cer-
       tain 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.

Release 1.26							     12/25/11								LaCheck(1)