How do I convert LaTeX to plain-text (ASCII)?

Opendetex is available both for Windows and Linux (compiles fine on a Mac as well). It can be downloaded from https://github.com/pkubowicz/opendetex

Usage:

detex project

opens project.tex, reads all files included using \include or \includeonly commands, outputs resulting text to standard output.

detex -n project > out.txt

opens project.tex, does not follow \include or \includeonly commands, outputs resulting text to out.txt

detex --help

shows full help

Extract it to any directory of your choice. Say you extracted it to your Downloads directory.

Create another directory of any name in that (this is optional but recommended). Let's say the directory name is “my_paper”. Put your paper in the “my_paper” directory. Assume your paper name is project.tex.

Navigate to the path

    cd ~/Downloads/opendetex

Run the command

    detex my_paper/project.tex  > out.txt

generic form

    detex -n full_path_to_tex_file.tex > output_text_file.txt

CatDVI can convert DVI to text and attempts to preserve the formatting.

You can try some of the programs proposed here:

TeX to ASCII

You can also try Pandoc, it can transform latex to many other formats. I suggest reading its documentation, for there may be some tricky cases that you need pass some arguments to handle.