Re: [Octal-dev] OCTAL and literate programming

[n_nelson]

  Dave O'Toole wrote:

  ----

  I'm writing a very "low-commitment" literate programming tool.  (see
  literateprogramming.com if you haven't heard of it.) It's written so
  that you *don't* need to process the source files just to compile
  them; you need only filter them when making a TeX file. I'm planning
  to try it out with some new OCTAL sources.  Especially considering
  the amount of math involved in some machines, being able to use TeX
  to typeset the formulas and illustrate algorithms will be a great
  boon to both ours and others' understanding.  If this project is to
  become a resource for DSP code and learning (which I hope happens)
  the use of literate programming would pretty much take care of it,
  as people will then be able to turn all of OCTAL into a printed,
  documented book.

  There's only three commands in this litprog system, as it's supposed
  to be *very* simple and easy to learn.  Of course, if you don't know
  TeX already, of course it becomes more, but it doesn't take much to
  just typeset plain words with TeX.

  The question is

  "is anybody interested?"

  I have some preliminary docs (but oddly enough, no program!!  :-) if
  anyone wants to see.

  ----

  I expect this is a bit off-topic for the OCTAL group but have some
  minor remarks.  Having only just looked at literateprogramming.com
  and having done some book typesetting in LaTeX, I suggest all
  hardcopy document objectives are fading fast against immediate
  Internet access documents such as in HTML, and along this line there
  are LaTeX to HTML conversion programs.  LaTeX is certainly the
  standard in mathematical typesetting, but the output becomes a
  picture or non-text format that, though pleasing to look at, cannot
  be then processed further as text data. I.e., if the objective is to
  mix code and documentation into a single source that can then be
  processed for either human viewing or machine compilation, an HTML
  or similar format, though perhaps deficient at the moment in certain
  LaTeX refinements, will have a greater, immediate use.  E.g., a new
  method/program as added to OCTAL (of which, including Linux, I am
  almost entirely ignorant); I log into the OCTAL web site and select
  the web page detailing that new code and documentation; I like the
  new method and save that HTML page to my OCTAL source directory.  I
  then use a literate-programming tool to compile directly from the
  HTML source.

  And then this kind of tool for increasing programming productivity
  might be seen as one of the strategies within the Automatic
  Programming area of Artificial Intelligence (see the _Handbook of
  Artificial Intelligence_).

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