LibreOffice and writer2latex
It is no other possibility than to convert the PDF to an editable format, and start the LaTeX-coding once more. If your book is mainly text, not lot of pictures, tables and formulas, a starting point is the following procedure:
- It may be wise to split you book, for example in chapters, to speed up the converting. Use PDFTK Builder or a similar tool to split and combine the PDF.
- Go to the Internet-page http://pdftoword.com/
- Upload your PDF(s) and wait until the Word-file(s) arrive(s).
- In the mean time, when you are waiting for the word files, install LibreOffice on your computer
- Install the latest writer2latex-plugin in LibreOffice
- Open the Word-files in LibreOffice and start structuring the text title, in headings, subheadings, etc.
- Export the final document to Latex, after setting up the writer2latex-plugin properly. Use as few options as possible to have a clean .tex-file.
- Start the LaTeX-recoding, use the PDF as a manuscript.
Lot of work, but at least this procedure may help you to get the base structure back.
InftyReader and InftyEditor
Based on the information that your book is mathematics, not pure text, the options seem limited. In the answer Recover TeX file back from compiled PDF, Aditya references the program InftyReader. I looked at the samples provided on the programs internet site, at it seems that the program is capable to convert mathematics to LaTeX source code.
I assume that your PDF-file is not binary (i.e. not a scanned print out). Then the procedure will be:
- Download the InftyEditor, the trial version of the InftyReader and IrfanView. Install all programs (it is Window$ programs)
- Use PDFTK Builder or a similar tool to split and combine the PDF in suitable chunks.
- Use Irfanview Batch Converter to convert your book/chapter to multipage TIFF(s).
- Load the files one by one into the
InftyReader
and take a look at the output. May be it is satisfying.
NB! I have never user InftyReader
or InftyEditor
, so I cannot tell you if this procedure will work, but an hour or two work may tell you.
Afterthoughts: If you are a consultant or otherwise is paid by hour, may be it is better to send the hard drive to a computer firm specialised on restructuring corrupted hard drives. Perhaps they can reconstruct the file system and save your file. You may be even can claim a tax deduction for the cost.