Re: Re: [Axiom-mail] Status

[Bill Page]

Tim,

On 2002/10/31 Thu PM 11:23:33 EST you wrote:
> ... 
> The new system build uses noweb (search for noweb Ramsey
> in google) which is a tool to support literate
> programming. If Axiom has any chance to survive it has
> got to be documented so anyone who is willing to put out
> the effort can learn how to build, modify and maintain
> it. I suggest you look at noweb and I can send you an
> example file or two to bring you up to speed on how
> I'm using it.
> 

Ok. I've read Ramsey's article and I now understand that
noweb is a stripdown version of Knuth's WEB. No problem.
A little "old fashioned" but that's ok.

I suppose almost everyone has their own "literate
programming" philosophy. For me it usually just involves
writing code in a style and format (within the constraints
of a particular language) that is intended to be read and
understood by others as well as compiled. When the language
is sufficiently rich, I also prefer to move as much of the
documentation as possible into the compilable code itself
rather than depending on a parallel textual description to
be accurate - too often the comments are right but the code
is still wrong. Of course you can't do that very well if
the code already exists or if the language is too arcane
to be easily read by a human. So WEB (noweb) is ok.

Are you using LaTex or some other output format?

Ramsey (and WEB in general) does not emphasize the use of
diagrammatic techniques, but I am rather much oriented that
way. Did you have any particular graphical documentation
tools in mind?

I am setting up the MSDOS/Windows/Perl version of noweb
in order to play. Feel free to send a few sample files
when you get a chance.

Bill Page.