Take the 2-minute tour ×  Basically that is the question - if we
have a DVI file can we get on the base on it the original TeX
file?  share|improve this question no, that is not possible. – 
Herbert Mar 4 '12 at 17:39 It is comparable to the task of
decomposing a once baked cake into its ingredients. –  Thorsten
Donig Nov 11 '12 at 8:42 add comment  4 Answers  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.  share|improve this answer add comment
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 l