Can we convert DVI or PostScript into TeX?

Question

Basically that is the question - if we have a DVI file can we get on the base on it the original TeX file?

Answer 1

The simple answer is no. If you have a dvi and have lost the TeX there are tools such as dvi2tty which will extract the text and some of the paragraph structure, but in general you will have to add the markup back by hand.

Answer 2

Somewhat alike to disassembling a compiled executable: Yes, technically it can be done - but you will lose much of the information that was contained in the original TeX source.

For example, the DVI contains the text "see also chapter 11.2".

You might be able to turn this into text again, but the information that this was originally written as see also chapter \ref{sec:FooBar} is irrevocably lost.

Since this is the case, I don't think anyone has ever made the effort to write such a DVI-to-text converter, since the usability of such text would be severly limited.

Answer 3

No, technically it cannot be done. DVI, PDF and postscript contain text arranged on a page according to instructions in a (La)TeX document. You can extract the text, and you can try to guess at commands that would generate a similar page, and you might even guess well. But you'd be doing it by matching the result. If there is a number in the text, for example, you can never know for sure if it was typed literally or came from a TeX counter. Imagine eating a cake and trying to reconstruct the recipe: If you're good you can identify the ingredients and guess a lot about what was done, but the recipe itself is not in the cake.

Despite what some others said, it's not at all like disassembling: Executable code contains the algorithm, and disassembly just translates it to a human-readable language. Going from dvi to LaTeX is more like trying to reconstruct a C program from its output: Reverse engineering is a better term for it.

Answer 4

PS files would be tremendously difficult to convert back to TeX.

With DVI files I think it would at least be partially possible. Of course all high-level macros and stuff like that would be lost. Compare the task to recovering, e.g., C++ code from a compiled binary file.