From tale@uunet.uu.net Tue Sep 21 11:18:03 1993 Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Path: uunet!tale From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence) Subject: newgroup comp.programming.literate Approved: tale@uunet.uu.net Sender: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1993 14:30:29 GMT Message-ID: Lines: 49 Xref: uunet control:723141 comp.programming.literate is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 354:31 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 16 Sep 1993 For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programs and programming tools. The charter, culled from the call for votes: A forum for the discussion of issues related to literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs. (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate programming tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate programming tools. If a newsgroup is created, it will be mirrored to the existing mailing list LitProg@shsu.edu. For reference purposes, the newsgroup will be fully archived by the host sponsoring the mailing list. Background: What is Literate Programming? Literate programming is a programming technique invented by Donald. E. Knuth. A literate programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* document. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. Knuth's original system, called WEB, generated Pascal code and a TeX documentation. Most tools relating to the TeX system have been written using WEB, and the TeX and Metafont programs have been published in book form. Today, there are Literate Programming systems for a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized Literate Programming tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and generic tools exist that can generate almost any programming language (including Perl and sh). Documentation systems supported include TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From news@pitt.edu Thu Sep 23 17:51:07 1993 Path: uunet!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!library.ucla.edu!news.mic.ucla.edu!ctc.com!pitt.edu!news From: news@pitt.edu (USENET News System) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate.ctl Subject: newgroup comp.programming.literate Message-ID: <2356@blue.cis.pitt.edu> Date: 23 Sep 93 16:27:00 GMT Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate Distribution: cis Organization: University of Pittsburgh Lines: 1 Approved: news+@pitt.edu Xref: uunet control:725273 Thu Sep 23 12:26:58 EDT 1993 From tale@uunet.uu.net Fri Aug 19 12:48:15 1994 Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Path: uunet!tale From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence) Subject: newgroup comp.programming.literate Approved: tale@uunet.uu.net Sender: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 16:48:39 GMT Message-ID: Lines: 49 Xref: uunet control:1137591 comp.programming.literate is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 354:31 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 16 Sep 1993 For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programs and programming tools. The charter, culled from the call for votes: A forum for the discussion of issues related to literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs. (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate programming tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate programming tools. If a newsgroup is created, it will be mirrored to the existing mailing list LitProg@shsu.edu. For reference purposes, the newsgroup will be fully archived by the host sponsoring the mailing list. Background: What is Literate Programming? Literate programming is a programming technique invented by Donald. E. Knuth. A literate programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* document. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. Knuth's original system, called WEB, generated Pascal code and a TeX documentation. Most tools relating to the TeX system have been written using WEB, and the TeX and Metafont programs have been published in book form. Today, there are Literate Programming systems for a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized Literate Programming tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and generic tools exist that can generate almost any programming language (including Perl and sh). Documentation systems supported include TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From bert@rsvl.unisys.com Mon Jun 26 21:42:24 1995 Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate y Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Path: uunet!kithrup.com!news.Stanford.EDU!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!bbnews!rsvl_ns!ernie!bert From: bert@rsvl.unisys.com (Bert Hyman) Subject: newgroup comp.programming.literate y Message-ID: Approved: news@unisys.com Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 17:52:38 GMT Distribution: unisys Organization: Unisys Lines: 3 Xref: uunet control:2196391 -- Bert Hyman | Unisys - Roseville MN bert@rsvl.unisys.com | (612) 635-7791 | net2: 524-7791 From rjoyner@uiuc.edu Fri Jan 5 23:47:02 1996 Path: uunet!in2.uu.net!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!not-for-mail From: rjoyner@uiuc.edu (R. Joyner) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate Date: 5 Jan 1996 22:43:09 -0600 Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 7 Approved: rjoyner@uiuc.edu Message-ID: <4ckukt$3g4@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: vixen.cso.uiuc.edu Xref: uunet control.newgroup:6156 For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Knuth's "literate programming" method and tools. /rsj From group-admin@isc.org Mon Mar 17 07:45:04 1997 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: group-admin@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Message-ID: <858612602.4086@isc.org> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 15:30:02 GMT Lines: 102 X-Info: ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README X-PGP-Sig: 2.6.2 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender iQCVAwUBMy1je8JdOtO4janBAQE1cgQAlzqctYildCj4Rg+gSINvYbnJw7YeoUk4 oKFLA7wrZg9Glrniq3MqERLh7C27hykwiLCQYleKiiicumvQMsruBTLQcuBFV+Yb q7J7xgirr/RDzjKZlB7B+Ag5/7SOWdkDjppzIXcoTq+mg4Us3EELc5iXK4AmkeEg o8F4EVA08mA= =8U2M Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:2614 comp.programming.literate is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 227:14 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1997. Group submission address: litprog-mod@cs.virginia.edu Moderator contact address: nr@cs.virginia.edu (David Fox, Marc van Leeuwen, Mary Bos, Matthias Neeracher, Michael Norrish, Norman Ramsey, Patrick TJ McPhee) For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programming and LP tools. (Moderated) The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: A forum for the discussion of literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs or more generally the presentation of code for human readers (e.g., prettyprinting). (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate- programming and related tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate-programming and related tools. Moderation Policies: Any posting that bears a plausible relationship to literate programming is welcome. For example, discussion may include techniques for prettyprinting code or other techniques for documenting design or code. Advertising of tools or services related to literate programming (e.g., offers to review programs for pay) is considered acceptable. Other advertising is unacceptable. Moderation will primarily be automatic, by robo-moderator. Submissions from regular contributors will be accepted immediately, without human intervention. The human moderators will examine other submissions; any submission that conforms to the newsgroup charter will be accepted, and the person making the submission will be added to the list of regular contributors (whose posts are automatically accepted). In the unlikely event that a regular contributor sends a number of off-topic posts, that person will be notified by a moderator and removed from the list of regular contributors. The exact number of such posts required to trigger this action is left to the good judgement of the moderators. The moderators will continue to accept on-topic posts from such persons; no person is ever to be prohibited from posting articles deemed acceptable under this charter. Background: The rest of this section presents some background information to help people identify what topics are related to literate programming. In an article published in _The Computer Journal_ 27 (1984), 97-111, Donald E. Knuth proposed a "literate" programming style: I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: "Literate Programming." Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a *computer* what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to *human beings* what we want a computer to do. The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other. There is reasonable (but not unanimous) consensus that a literate-programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* source. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. - The program may be formatted or prettyprinted in a way that makes it especially readable. Existing literate-programming systems support a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and there are language-independent tools exist that support almost any programming language (including Perl, sh, and make). Documentation systems supported include HTML, TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From tale@uunet.uu.net Mon Mar 17 13:45:04 1997 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Message-ID: <858634203.5857@isc.org> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 21:30:03 GMT Lines: 102 X-Info: ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README X-PGP-Sig: 2.6.2 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender iQCVAwUBMy233MJdOtO4janBAQHxTwP9F6d97vHKcMzSvlG2odhqVrDlRVk6uJ3l Abqgnut05ZDsMiKQ8yjvihMaC14pIll8GSPpn59tOSRbiOkwCL+McXzt49PkrmS3 mFTacFZHuJNXrbK4MpMUXfQq8Erz8S2hZtUyNnm0qKc8T4NZwdcw2UZzen8OHuzB p4L5jQj79uM= =1dal Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:2626 comp.programming.literate is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 227:14 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1997. Group submission address: litprog-mod@cs.virginia.edu Moderator contact address: nr@cs.virginia.edu (David Fox, Marc van Leeuwen, Mary Bos, Matthias Neeracher, Michael Norrish, Norman Ramsey, Patrick TJ McPhee) For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programming and LP tools. (Moderated) The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: A forum for the discussion of literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs or more generally the presentation of code for human readers (e.g., prettyprinting). (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate- programming and related tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate-programming and related tools. Moderation Policies: Any posting that bears a plausible relationship to literate programming is welcome. For example, discussion may include techniques for prettyprinting code or other techniques for documenting design or code. Advertising of tools or services related to literate programming (e.g., offers to review programs for pay) is considered acceptable. Other advertising is unacceptable. Moderation will primarily be automatic, by robo-moderator. Submissions from regular contributors will be accepted immediately, without human intervention. The human moderators will examine other submissions; any submission that conforms to the newsgroup charter will be accepted, and the person making the submission will be added to the list of regular contributors (whose posts are automatically accepted). In the unlikely event that a regular contributor sends a number of off-topic posts, that person will be notified by a moderator and removed from the list of regular contributors. The exact number of such posts required to trigger this action is left to the good judgement of the moderators. The moderators will continue to accept on-topic posts from such persons; no person is ever to be prohibited from posting articles deemed acceptable under this charter. Background: The rest of this section presents some background information to help people identify what topics are related to literate programming. In an article published in _The Computer Journal_ 27 (1984), 97-111, Donald E. Knuth proposed a "literate" programming style: I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: "Literate Programming." Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a *computer* what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to *human beings* what we want a computer to do. The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other. There is reasonable (but not unanimous) consensus that a literate-programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* source. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. - The program may be formatted or prettyprinted in a way that makes it especially readable. Existing literate-programming systems support a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and there are language-independent tools exist that support almost any programming language (including Perl, sh, and make). Documentation systems supported include HTML, TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From group-admin@isc.org Mon Mar 24 07:45:07 1997 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: group-admin@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Message-ID: <859217407.11356@isc.org> Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 15:30:07 GMT Lines: 102 X-Info: ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README X-PGP-Sig: 2.6.2 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender iQCVAwUBMzad/8JdOtO4janBAQHwRgP/dcDDif7LVzadS9Ig9AOBZrahTEBfaqk1 pnLMfqCpPIdH+G+svNQ+MBBseVJfrwGvF0VZq+NXACZJ7zvKxLUdJvusfB7xEzid 8JpuC1bO1e0SjEm8yXWXn3Nbcn/fBjBrEWiUbFIC2XAda9CwL+HKQhjVxJUeRMLj aVzP2NNZZ4Q= =EBPh Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:3009 comp.programming.literate is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 227:14 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1997. Group submission address: litprog-mod@cs.virginia.edu Moderator contact address: nr@cs.virginia.edu (David Fox, Marc van Leeuwen, Mary Bos, Matthias Neeracher, Michael Norrish, Norman Ramsey, Patrick TJ McPhee) For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programming and LP tools. (Moderated) The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: A forum for the discussion of literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs or more generally the presentation of code for human readers (e.g., prettyprinting). (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate- programming and related tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate-programming and related tools. Moderation Policies: Any posting that bears a plausible relationship to literate programming is welcome. For example, discussion may include techniques for prettyprinting code or other techniques for documenting design or code. Advertising of tools or services related to literate programming (e.g., offers to review programs for pay) is considered acceptable. Other advertising is unacceptable. Moderation will primarily be automatic, by robo-moderator. Submissions from regular contributors will be accepted immediately, without human intervention. The human moderators will examine other submissions; any submission that conforms to the newsgroup charter will be accepted, and the person making the submission will be added to the list of regular contributors (whose posts are automatically accepted). In the unlikely event that a regular contributor sends a number of off-topic posts, that person will be notified by a moderator and removed from the list of regular contributors. The exact number of such posts required to trigger this action is left to the good judgement of the moderators. The moderators will continue to accept on-topic posts from such persons; no person is ever to be prohibited from posting articles deemed acceptable under this charter. Background: The rest of this section presents some background information to help people identify what topics are related to literate programming. In an article published in _The Computer Journal_ 27 (1984), 97-111, Donald E. Knuth proposed a "literate" programming style: I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: "Literate Programming." Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a *computer* what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to *human beings* what we want a computer to do. The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other. There is reasonable (but not unanimous) consensus that a literate-programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* source. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. - The program may be formatted or prettyprinted in a way that makes it especially readable. Existing literate-programming systems support a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and there are language-independent tools exist that support almost any programming language (including Perl, sh, and make). Documentation systems supported include HTML, TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From group-admin@isc.org Tue Mar 25 22:28:19 1997 Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Path: news.isc.org!vixie!data.ramona.vix.com!sonysjc!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!unihil!baghira.han.de!ps386!news From: group-admin@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Distribution: local iQCVAwUBMy1je8JdOtO4janBAQE1cgQAlzqctYildCj4Rg+gSINvYbnJw7YeoUk4 oKFLA7wrZg9Glrniq3MqERLh7C27hykwiLCQYleKiiicumvQMsruBTLQcuBFV+Yb q7J7xgirr/RDzjKZlB7B+Ag5/7SOWdkDjppzIXcoTq+mg4Us3EELc5iXK4AmkeEg o8F4EVA08mA= =8U2M X-Pgp-Sig: 2.6.2 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender Sender: schieb@ps386.han.de X-Info: ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html Organization: private Linux-site Lines: 102 Message-ID: <858612602.4086.resent@isc.org> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 15:30:02 GMT Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:3127 comp.programming.literate is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 227:14 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1997. Group submission address: litprog-mod@cs.virginia.edu Moderator contact address: nr@cs.virginia.edu (David Fox, Marc van Leeuwen, Mary Bos, Matthias Neeracher, Michael Norrish, Norman Ramsey, Patrick TJ McPhee) For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programming and LP tools. (Moderated) The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: A forum for the discussion of literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs or more generally the presentation of code for human readers (e.g., prettyprinting). (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate- programming and related tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate-programming and related tools. Moderation Policies: Any posting that bears a plausible relationship to literate programming is welcome. For example, discussion may include techniques for prettyprinting code or other techniques for documenting design or code. Advertising of tools or services related to literate programming (e.g., offers to review programs for pay) is considered acceptable. Other advertising is unacceptable. Moderation will primarily be automatic, by robo-moderator. Submissions from regular contributors will be accepted immediately, without human intervention. The human moderators will examine other submissions; any submission that conforms to the newsgroup charter will be accepted, and the person making the submission will be added to the list of regular contributors (whose posts are automatically accepted). In the unlikely event that a regular contributor sends a number of off-topic posts, that person will be notified by a moderator and removed from the list of regular contributors. The exact number of such posts required to trigger this action is left to the good judgement of the moderators. The moderators will continue to accept on-topic posts from such persons; no person is ever to be prohibited from posting articles deemed acceptable under this charter. Background: The rest of this section presents some background information to help people identify what topics are related to literate programming. In an article published in _The Computer Journal_ 27 (1984), 97-111, Donald E. Knuth proposed a "literate" programming style: I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: "Literate Programming." Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a *computer* what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to *human beings* what we want a computer to do. The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other. There is reasonable (but not unanimous) consensus that a literate-programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* source. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. - The program may be formatted or prettyprinted in a way that makes it especially readable. Existing literate-programming systems support a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and there are language-independent tools exist that support almost any programming language (including Perl, sh, and make). Documentation systems supported include HTML, TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows. From group-admin@isc.org Thu Apr 17 07:45:04 1997 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: group-admin@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Control: newgroup comp.programming.literate moderated Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Message-ID: <861287401.9105@isc.org> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:30:01 GMT Lines: 102 X-Info: ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README X-PGP-Sig: 2.6.2 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender iQCVAwUBM1Yz6sJdOtO4janBAQFc8QP/QL7Kz+80Ci/a1cIR864ztDGFknOcBcaV EiMZoZEDeBT+TiE01pcofE1HlkpTR7J7enMlgwksJmyMatHgkplyOG0aQjiTKFWa H926i34gZpH/xBiccKG7A9/rkHe0Shb1bCtuRQDPe8FUpocs1mtpa4kIqYbVKcjH lvWepsx2WJI= =PeKe Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:3878 comp.programming.literate is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 227:14 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1997. Group submission address: litprog-mod@cs.virginia.edu Moderator contact address: nr@cs.virginia.edu (David Fox, Marc van Leeuwen, Mary Bos, Matthias Neeracher, Michael Norrish, Norman Ramsey, Patrick TJ McPhee) For your newsgroups file: comp.programming.literate Literate programming and LP tools. (Moderated) The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: A forum for the discussion of literate programming. (1) To share ideas, questions, experiences, and knowledge about the reading and writing of literate programs or more generally the presentation of code for human readers (e.g., prettyprinting). (2) To discuss the merits of the currently existing literate- programming and related tools. (3) To discuss the design of new literate-programming and related tools. Moderation Policies: Any posting that bears a plausible relationship to literate programming is welcome. For example, discussion may include techniques for prettyprinting code or other techniques for documenting design or code. Advertising of tools or services related to literate programming (e.g., offers to review programs for pay) is considered acceptable. Other advertising is unacceptable. Moderation will primarily be automatic, by robo-moderator. Submissions from regular contributors will be accepted immediately, without human intervention. The human moderators will examine other submissions; any submission that conforms to the newsgroup charter will be accepted, and the person making the submission will be added to the list of regular contributors (whose posts are automatically accepted). In the unlikely event that a regular contributor sends a number of off-topic posts, that person will be notified by a moderator and removed from the list of regular contributors. The exact number of such posts required to trigger this action is left to the good judgement of the moderators. The moderators will continue to accept on-topic posts from such persons; no person is ever to be prohibited from posting articles deemed acceptable under this charter. Background: The rest of this section presents some background information to help people identify what topics are related to literate programming. In an article published in _The Computer Journal_ 27 (1984), 97-111, Donald E. Knuth proposed a "literate" programming style: I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: "Literate Programming." Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a *computer* what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to *human beings* what we want a computer to do. The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other. There is reasonable (but not unanimous) consensus that a literate-programming system can be characterized by the following properties: - The compilable program and the publishable documentation should be generated *automatically* from a *single* source. - The program can be presented in the order that is best for human understanding, regardless of any requirements of the programming language. - The program should be automatically indexed and cross-referenced. - The program may be formatted or prettyprinted in a way that makes it especially readable. Existing literate-programming systems support a wide range of programming languages and documentation systems. Specialized tools have been written for Ada, Awk, C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Pascal and Scheme, and there are language-independent tools exist that support almost any programming language (including Perl, sh, and make). Documentation systems supported include HTML, TeX, Troff, and Word for Windows.