Re: Literate Programming in Ada, AdaDoc, AdaBrowse

[Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org>]

Steve wrote:

> Just to share another hairbrained scheme regarding documentation.
> 
> What I would like to see is a fancy programming editor that allows you to
> include text, graphics, spreadsheets, etc., in comments.
> 
> A way to do this is to maintain the source code as text with special markers
> referencing the comments, and maintain the comments in a separate file or
> database.  The approach has the advantage that the compiler doesn't have to
> deal with the comments and the source may be viewed without the comments
> using a different editor.  It has the disadvantage that a special editor is
> required to edit the code along with the comments, and since the code and
> comments are in separate files, there is always potential of losing the
> comment files.  The editor could be made to output the source with comments
> in a standard format: html, pdf, etc.

Already available:

fancy editor    = WYSIWYG HTML or XML editor
viewer          = web browser
special markers = XML tags

This can be done in the style I earlier proposed,
where the code is extracted from the file for compiling.
But it can also be done where the HTML/XML appears ONLY
in the code comments.  In the latter, however, it may be
difficult to make right margins (indents) look right.

-- 
Wes Groleau

A pessimist says the glass is half empty.

An optimist says the glass is half full.

An engineer says somebody made the glass
        twice as big as it needed to be.