the TEX file disappeard

Hi,

Can you be more explicit about:
* Your wrong command
* Checking language
* Calling "joe TEST"

It is very difficult to understand what your question is about.

Dear Sir:

I am writing a book in TEX. As one knows, there are several commends, step by step, which I have to compleete : joe test, tex test, and xdvi test.dvi&. I work in the tex file with the first commend.

When I tried to check spelling, I wrote ^[L, following indications ^KH. Everything was OK untill I pushed a wrong (forbiden) letter as a commend and the TEX text disappeared. The problem is: how can I recover it, or how can I use the dvi file to go back to the TEX file?

Thank you in advance,
                        Professor Ioan Merches

Hi,

Thanks for the information. It is clear now that your question is not related to tex, but to joe, a text editor you use to edit tex files. I don't know this editor, so I am not sure I can answer your question. It seems that you have entered a wrong command, and that joe did something you did not expect with the file. Among the possibilities, the editor might have removed the file, moved it somewhere else, or replaced it with a blank file.

I would suggest first to look at which files are present in the directory. Many editors save backup files, sometimes they have a strange name (starting or ending by a ~ or a . ). Try to open this backup file, most of your work is probably there. If you don't find your backup file, you can still search your hard drive for test.tex, in case your file has been moved somewhere else. Otherwise, your file is likely to be loss, and you have to get part of the work thanks to tricks, like copying and pasting from the dvi, turning the dvi to text. By the way, it is always clever to backup the content of your disk regularly, on a DVD, an external hard drive, etc.

Hope this helps.

Dear Sir :

I solved the problem! The file I lost was in DEADJOE! As a matter of fact, I recovered only 80% of it, but this makes me happy. Twenty pages, with formulas only, are written in about one week... You are wright, I entered a wrong command while performing the spell checking. Unfortunately, I do not know which was it. But I will be more careful in the future.

It would be most kind of you if you could teach me how to turn a file from DVI to TEX. I was told that this was not possible. I am not at all an expert in computers, but I know how to use (plain)TEX in my field (theoretical physics). It was a very useful tool when performing a Fulbright program at the University of Miami.

I will push the button "Problem Solved", but I'm kindly expecting an answer regarding the "way back" of a DVI file.

Whis many thanks and best wishes,
                                      Ioan Merches

Hi,

As far as I know, it is not possible to turn back the dvi into the tex perfectly. However, what is possible is to turn the dvi or the resulting ps or pdf into plain text, with tools like pdf2txt or equivalent. You lose all the formatting, but you save the text, which is the most important. In any case, a lot of work is lost, so it's not a good idea to erase files... I don't know what you have typed in Joe, but you have probably erased the file and save it... bad luck!

Dear Sir :

There is a command to use a big round brace with two or three lines in it. Unfortunately, I do not know this command (as a matter of fact, I ignore many, but now I need this one). It would be most kind of you if you could tell me what is it!

Sincerely yours,
                             Ioan Merches

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