I think the best way can be to convert the source to html using LaTeX2HTML and then convert the html files to txt using cat foo.html | w3m -dump -T text/ht

I think the best way can be to convert the source to html using LaTeX2HTML and then convert the html files to txt using cat foo.html | w3m -dump -T text/html > foo.txt (w3m a text based web browser)