[texworks] recovering source

[Stefan Löffler]

On 2010-12-30 04:38, Jon Wild wrote:
> Somehow I've managed to lose the text file for a LaTeX document I'd
> been working on for a while, during a period when my network backup
> was down. I must have done something stupid when clearing up my
> desktop, and emptied the recycle bin since then. I have an .aux, a
> .log, a .pdf and a .synctex.gz, but no associated .tex anywhere to be
> found. I'm on OS X, 10.5, and my TeXworks is 0.2.3.
>
> Copying and pasting the plain text from the .pdf, then redoing all the
> mark-up by hand, is going to be tedious... there isn't any information
> encoded in the pdf output that I could get at and that could help me,
> is there?

I'm afraid you won't have much luck with that. In principle, all
formatting information is in the pdf, of course (otherwise you couldn't
view it), but not in a suitable way for LaTeX. So unless someone knows a
pdf -> latex converter, I think redoing the mark-up is your only chance
(or searching any backups you might have).

In any case, this list is specific to the Tw editor (which doesn't have
such a feature), so this question would probably be better suited for a
general latex and/or pdf list.

HTH
Stefan