ChkTeX v1.6.1

Jens T. Berger Thielemann

1 Introduction

This program has been written in frustration because some constructs in L^AT_EX are sometimes non-intuitive, and easy to forget. It is not a replacement for the built-in checker in L^AT_EX; however it catches some typographic errors L^AT_EX oversees. In other words, it is Lint for L^AT_EX. Filters are also provided for checking the L^AT_EX parts of CWEB documents.

It is written in ANSI C and compiles silently under GCC using ``-Wall -ansi -pedantic'' and almost all warning flags. This means that you can compile & use the program on your favorite machine. Full source included.

The program also supports output formats suitable for further processing by editors or other programs, making errors easy to cycle through. Software is provided for beautifully interfacing against the AUC-TeX Emacs mode, CygnusED, GoldEd and various Amiga message browsers.

The program itself does not have any machine requirements; Amiga, MSDOS and OS/2 binaries are available. Of course, you'll need ARexx and ScMsg or VBrowse to benefit from the ARexx scripts.

2 Features

ChkTeX begins to get quite a few bells & whistles now. However, you should be aware of that in most cases, all this is transparent to the user. As you will see, ChkTeX offers the ability to adapt to many environments and configurations.

2.1 New features

Modifications and additions since v1.6:

Improved the build system
Better fixes for memory access errors

Modifications and additions since v1.5:

Fixed a crash when running from emacs
Fixed a crash when checking our own manual
Added verb* support

Modifications and additions since v1.4:

2.1.1 Program

Modifications to the executable itself:

As usual, a few more warnings:
- No space or similar in front/after parenthesis.
- Demands a consistent quote style.
- Double spaces in input which will not be rendered as one.
- Punctuation malplaced regarding to math mode.
- Warns about TeX primitives.
- Space in front of footnotes.
- Bogus left and right commands.
The abbreviation recognizer has (for the last time?) been redesigned. We now produce far less false warnings, catch more cases and do all this faster than before. Seems like a win.

Done much of the same with the italic correction detection part, too...
Some bugs have been silently fixed. Hot spots in the program have been optimized; in certain cases this in fact doubles the speed!

Along with this goes more code elegance and utilization of macro processing and the C language. Take a look at ``Resource.[ch]''.
It's possible to specify separate output-formats depending on whether you are sending the output to a file/pipe or to a terminal.
Column positions are finally correct; we now expand tabs correctly.
ChkTeX will now recursively search for input'ed files, both in the document and on the commandline. See the ``chktexrc'' file for more info.
The debug switch is now more intelligent; if you wish to hack a bit on ChkTeX for yourself, it is possible to produce selective debugging output. The feature can also be disabled altogether.
MS-DOS and OS/2 version of the program is now more flexible and well-behaved, thanks to Gerd Böhm.
You may now say ``-wall'' to make all messages warnings, and turn them on.
Uses termcap on UNIX boxes; this should ensure that ``-v2'' (or more precisely: ``%i'' and ``%I'') works regardless to what terminal you are using.

2.1.2 Resource file

New concepts introduced in the setup file:

You may now specify both case-sensitive and case-insensitive user patterns in the ``chktexrc'' file. In addition; it is now possible to reset/clear lists.
It is possible to specify how many arguments (optional/required) ``WIPEARG'' should wipe; it behaves also somewhat more intelligent when the arguments stretch over multiple lines.
Global files will be read in addition to local ones. The searching order has also been reversed in order to make this more intelligent.

2.1.3 Other

Various other stuff I've done to the product:

The documentation has been polished and should now be easier to use in practical situations.
``check'' target in ``Makefile'', so you can check that the installation succeeded. In fact, the ``Makefile'' has been enhanced in several other ways too, amongst other it is now GNU conforming.
``deweb'' is now documented; you may say ``man deweb'' to get a few words of advice. The support script (chkweb) does now behave as the remaining package (accepting stdin input and flags).
I've written an Emacs hack which magically adds ChkTeX to the list of AUC-TeX commands; thus making the use of the program even more trivial.

For those of you who don't wish to mess with Emacs, I've included a trivial lacheck <-> ChkTeX interface.

This means that you now can use ChkTeX just as easily as lacheck when you're running AUC-TeX.
Added an ARexx script which lets ChkTeX talk to VBrowse, the message browser of Volker Barthelmann's freely distributable ANSI C compiler. The browser itself is available on Aminet as ``dev/c/vbcc.lha''.

2.2 Feature list

Supports over 40 warnings. Warnings include:
- Commands terminated with space. Ignores ``tt'', etc.
- Space in front of references instead of ``~''.
- Forgetting to group parenthesis characters when sub-/superscripting.
- Italic correction (``/'') mistakes (double, missing, unnecessary).
- Parenthesis and environment matching.
- Ellipsis detection; also checks whether to use ``dots'', ``cdots'' or ``ldots''.
- Enforcement of normal space after abbreviation. Detects most abbreviations automagically.
- Enforcement of end-of-sentence space when the last sentence ended with capital letter.
- Math-mode on/off detection.
- Quote checking, both wrong types (``"'') and wrong direction.
- Recommends splitting three quotes in a row.
- Searching for user patterns.
- Displays comments.
- Space in front of ``label'' and similar commands.
- Use of ``x'' instead of `` $times$ '' between numbers.
- Multiple spaces in input which will be rendered as one space (or multiple spaces, where that is undesirable).
- Warns about text which may be ignored.
- Mathematical operators typeset as variables.
- No space in front of/after parenthesis.
- Demands a consistent quote style.
- Punctuation inside inner math mode/outside display math mode.
- Use of TeX primitives where L^AT_EX equivalents are available.
- Space in front of footnotes.
- Bogus characters following commands.
Fully customizable. Intelligent resource format makes it possible to make ChkTeX respect your L^AT_EX setup. Even command-line options may be specified globally in the ``chktexrc'' file.
Supports ``input'' command; both TeX and L^AT_EX version. Actually includes the files. ``TEXINPUTS''-equivalent search path.
Intelligent warning/error handling. The user may promote/mute warnings to suit his preferences. You may also mute warnings in the header of a file; thus killing much unwanted garbage.
Scripts included for checking CWEB files written in L^AT_EX. (Requires perl v5).
Supports both L^AT_EX 2.09 and L^AT_EX 2e.
Flexible output handling. Has some predefined formats and lets the user specify his own format. Uses a ``printf()'' similar syntax. ``lacheck'' compatible mode included for interfacing with the AUC-TeX Emacs mode.
ARexx scripts for interfacing with ScMsg and VBrowse are included. Special scripts included for CygnusED/GoldED, for binding to hotkey.
Amiga Workbench support. Parameters may be passed by shift-clicking the L^AT_EX files and setting the remaining options in the tooltypes.
Wildcard matching (Amiga only). Matches file patterns internally, thus saving a lot of work. This is, however, platform-specific code --- on UNIX boxes this is done by the shell.
Written in ANSI C. ``configure'' script included for easy setup and installation on UNIX systems.

Still, it is important to realize that the output from ChkTeX is only intended as a guide to fixing faults. However, it is by no means always correct. This means that correct L^AT_EX code may produce errors in ChkTeX, and vice versa: Incorrect L^AT_EX code may pass silently through.

3 Legal stuff

ChkTeX, documentation, installations scripts, CWEB filters and other materials provided are copyright © 1995--96 Jens T. Berger Thielemann, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to:

The Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Mass Ave
Cambridge
MA 02139
USA

3.1 Registration

`ChkTeX' is made available under the concept of Gift-Ware, which is a variant of Share-Ware. Share-Ware software authors often release `crippled' versions of their products, i.e. these programs do not support the same functionality as the registered versions you get when sending monetary contributions to the authors. It all comes down to `pay for the software you are using' in Share-Ware terms. With Gift-Ware registration it is different, you are not required to contribute money, but a gift will do. With `ChkTeX' you always get a fully functional program, there is no `crippled' test release which you can try for a limited time and then have to pay for in order to receive the working registered version.

It may seem as if `ChkTeX' was free, but this is not the case. Although there is no need to pay the author in order to get a fully functional version of the program you should consider making a contribution. You don't need to feel guilty if you cannot or do not want to give me something in return for the work I have put into `ChkTeX'. Show me that it was worth spending so much time listening to users, updating, rewriting and enhancing this program. Your contributions will provide the motivation for me to keep developing the program.

Send your contribution to the following address:

Jens Berger
Spektrumvn. 4
N-0666 Oslo
Norway

HTML

4 Availability

This program will be uploaded to CTAN; thus it can be found at any mirrors of those.

5 Installation

A few words on installation on various platforms:

Amiga:

Use the supplied Installer script.

MS-DOS & OS/2:

Copy the binary (``ChkTeX.exe'') to somewhere in your path, and place the ``chktexrc'' file in the same directory.

If you're running Emacs, you may wish to copy the file ``chktex.el'' to your elisp source directory, and add the following line to your ``.emacs'' file:

(require 'chktex)

UNIX:

Type ``configure'', ``make'' and finally ``make install''. To make sure everything proceeded correctly, type ``make check''. If you don't have superuser privileges and thus access to the default system areas, you should type ``configure --help'' to help you set up correct paths.

If you haven't installed any software like this before, that is distributed in source form, here are some guidelines to help you install it locally at your account. Please note that a mail to the system administrator may be less work for you. :-)

We assume that you have put the archive (``chktex.tar.gz'') in a subdir of yours, with path ``~/tmp''. We further assume that your shell is ``csh'' or ``tcsh''. Do the following:

First of all, unpack the archive contents.

> cd ~/tmp
> gunzip chktex.tar.gz
> tar xf chktex.tar

Now, we can configure the program. There are some configuration options you should know about:
``--enable-emacs-hack'':
Install a small file which adds ChkTeX to the command menu of AUC-TeX. This is to be considered as a hack, and may break in future versions of AUC-TeX. It works fine under AUC-TeX v2.9, though.

This option needs the path of your elisp directory as argument, e.g. ``--enable-emacs-hack=/home/myself/elisp'' or similar.

You'll also have to add the following line to your ``.emacs'' file:
```
(require 'chktex)
```
You can now access ChkTeX from the ``Command'' menu in AUC-TeX. To cycle through the messages, type C-x `.
``--enable-lacheck-replace''
This enables a quick hack for making the AUC-TeX Emacs mode use ChkTeX instead of lacheck. This is done by installing a stub script which ``overrides'' the original lacheck executable.

While more stable than the previous solution, this is also significantly less elegant --- in computing terms, this is the ``brute force'' approach.

``--enable-debug-info''
ChkTeX has an ability to spit out various diagnostic messages using the ``-d'' flag. This behaviour is on by default. By adding the flag ``--disable-debug-info'' to the commandline, this will not be compiled in.

This may be useful if you're running short of disk space (the time savings are neglible).
If you are installing the program on your local account, use the following command:
```
> configure --prefix ~/
```
Add eventual extra flags as specified above. This command will generate a significant amount of output, this can usually be ignored.
Finally, we can just build the program and install it.
```
> make
> make install
```
Finished! The program is now installed and ready to use. You may now tell other people to put your bindir in their path in order to benefit from your work. All that remains is to make the shell aware of your installation.
```
> rehash
```
To make the remaining parts of your system aware of this, you'll have to log out and re-log in, I'm afraid. However, you should delay this until you've completed this installation procedure.
If you wish to make sure that everything is OK (you ought to), you may now ask ChkTeX to do a self-test:
```
> make check
```

Other platforms:

First of all, you have to copy the ``config.h.in'' file to a file named ``config.h''. Then, edit it to reflect your system. Do the same with ``OpSys.h'' (this file has been reduced significantly). If you wish, you may define ``DATADIR'' to the path you want the global resource file to be put.

Now, I would suggest that you take a peak at the ``OpSys.c'' file, and edit it appropiately, for more comfort. This should not be necessary, though, at least not the first time.

Finally, you may now compile and link all.c@ files. Define ``HAVE_CONFIG_H'' to 1 (on the command-line, for instance). If the ``config.h'' you wish to use has another name, define ``CONFIG_H_NAME'' to that (in that case, don't define ``HAVE_CONFIG_H'').

Put the directory path of the ``chktexrc'' file in a environment variable named ``CHKTEXRC''. The files ``deweb.in'' and ``chkweb'' should be moved to a directory in your path. These files may need further setup, as they haven't got the location of perl initialized.

If your compiler/the compiled program complains (or crashes!), you may try the hints listed below. Please note that it only makes sense to try these hints if your compiler fails to produce a working program.

Increase the preprocessor buffers and line buffers. The ChkTeX sources define macros sized 3--4k (expanding to about the same), and passes arguments sized about 1k.
Use the magic switch which lets us use large ``switch(...){...}'' statements; some of these statements have about 120 ``case'' entries.
The sources require that at least the first 12 of each identifier is significant.

Note: You must install the new ``chktexrc'' file; ChkTeX will fail to function unless!

After doing this, you may enhance ChkTeX' behaviour by reading/editing the ``chktexrc'' file.

6 Contacting the author

If you wish to contact me for any reason or would like to participate in the development of ChkTeX, please write to:

Jens Berger
Spektrumvn. 4
N-0666 Oslo
Norway
E-mail: <jensthi@ifi.uio.no>

Any signs of intelligent life are welcomed; that should exclude piracy.

Since the original author is unreachable, the maintainer these days is:

Baruch Even
E-mail: <chktex@ev-en.org>

Have fun.

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.