Re: [Texmacs-dev] literate programming for TeXmacs

[David MENTRE]

Hello Joris and Felix,

2006/1/24, Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>:
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 04:52:34AM +0000, Felix Breuer wrote:
> > To avoid misunderstandings: I think there were actually three concepts
> > in discussion, namely
> >
> > 1) David's original idea: Use TeXmacs to work on source files that have
> >    tm markup as comments.
> > 2) My original idea: Generate (multiple) source files (without comments)
> >    from a single TeXmacs document.
> > 3) What I am currently suggesting: Serialize a TeXmacs document as a
> >    source file where TeXmacs markup is commented. (This is a variant
> >    of David's suggestion.)
> >
> > I am in favour of 3) because it seems to be the easiest way to get
> > a literate programming system that works both ways.
>
> OK, that is a variant of 1).

Yes, I don't see much differences between the two approaches.

Otherwise I've read Felix specs and, as him, I'm in favor of a simple
approach at first, i.e. 1) or 3). I'm not sure I've understood
everything of the clone suggestion of Felix.

One important point to me is to be able to have multiple source file
to make a single literate document. For example, from file_a.tm.c and
file_b.tm.c and maybe a master.tm document, being able to have a
texmacs document that have references between file_a and file_b parts.
As TeXmacs already support document-from-mutlitple-texmacs-file, it
does not seem difficult to do, at first sight.


> > > 3) The handling of TeXmacs comments in source files should be
> > >    very easy to implement. Something like
> > >
> > >     /* TeXmacs 1.0.5.7 markup
> > >     ....
> > >     end TeXmacs markup */
> > >
> > >    would probably be a good marker in the case of C/C++ files.
> >
> > Can the string "*/" appear in TeXmacs markup?
>
> That is not the issue here. The source file would be a plain C or C++ file.
> The import filter for C++ files in TeXmacs would be modified so as to
> first extract all comments of the above type. When saving a C or C++ file,
> the comments would be put back in.

The simplest solution is probably to escape all "/*" and "*\" as
"\\\*" and "\/\*". The M-x comment-region of Emacs' c-mode do similar
things.


Felix, I do plan to work on this project, albeit not full time (I'm
working on another free software project). I'm ready to do some
development and tests.

I don't know much of C++ and Scheme. However I know about OO concepts
(but I'm bad at OO design) and I'm using OCaml (ML-like language) on a
regular basis.

Felix, how do you plan to do the development of this feature? Should
we start by writting a short specification? Any idea of API/code to
look at as a starting point?

Best wishes,
d.