how to turn a DVI to tex?

Question

Any idea how to take DVI files and turn them into tex?

Answer 1

This is similar to the problem of turning PDF into XML which is referred to as "trying to turn a hamburger back into a cow". Both TeX->DVI and XML->PDF lose information, both in the structure of the document and its semantics.

It requires a great deal of heuristics and a large corpus to recreate (some of) the original document. It is never usually 100%. The text strings may be possible, the vectors are harder. Bitmaps are almost impossible.

Answer 2

What you are asking is not possible. I think that (same as in PostScript) even recognizing words in a DVI files may require heuristics. A DVI file is a description of where to place individual letters on a piece of paper, and nothing more.

You can get partway there by either dvi2tty, or by running dvips followed by ps2ascii, whichever gives the best results.