[Axiom-developer] Desired functionality from noweb

[C Y]

As I'm getting deeper into learning what noweb is capable of, I would
like to ask the list if anyone is familiar with the various options
noweb provides on the LaTeX side of the equation and how many of them
people like to use.

The noweb style file defines many elaborate output options, but coming
at it from a "need to generate LaTeX" standpoint I can't help wondering
if something a little less elaborate would meet our needs - dhmatrix
doesn't appear to use too many of the fancier noweb options and with
hyperlinking to link chunks together I'm not sure if some of the
features (e.g. the labels identifying page number and a,b,c etc.) add
enough to be worth supporting them.  Does anyone have any opinions
about this?

My thought at this time is with hyperref to link chunks to their
definitions (e.g. treat them like normal LaTeX hyperrefs) and perhaps
automatically generating index entries for chunks that should be enough
to cover what we would require.  (perhaps an automatically inserted
"used by" note would be handy to identify the higher level chunk into
which a sub-chunk is inserted.)  I am not particularly concerned about
having the web routine try to deduce from the code in the chunk what
other chunks have code that uses the functionality defined there -
indeed with Lisp macros any such listing would almost have to be
incomplete if generated automatically.  In my opinion the surrounding
text should describe such relationships if they are non-obvious (e.g.
something a utility like xref couldn't deduce.)

My impulse is to see how much functionality can be achieved by
straightforward, standard LaTeX generation, but that may be a waste of
time if the features provided by noweb.sty are essential.  What is the
general opinion on this, particularly from more experienced literate
programmers out there?

Cheers,
CY

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