From: mckearney_s Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: Hypertext WEB Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 09:05:44 +0100 Organization: Litprog<==>Comp.Programming.Literate Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Hello, There have been some comments about bypertext being the 'next' extension of LP. When I tell people about LP many say that hypertext would be even better. I can see that jumping around code, etc is likely to be useful but I also think that the printed book form of the LP is one of its advantages. What do others think of hypertext as the 'next' thing in LP? Should it be the obvious direction to go? It would probably sell LP in a big way. Also, I have tried introducing LP to people who use Visual Basic, Smalltalk and other interface-oriented languages. The problem is LP does not fit this style because the interface to the language is so important. VB is a particular problem in this respect. Any comments on this? (Except "VB is rubbish", etc.). How does LP fit in with the new visual languages that still require a lot of coding but which are interface driven? Stephen Mc Kearney ======================================================================= From marcus@x4u.desy.de Tue Oct 5 23:57:21 1993 Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Path: dscomsa!dscomsf!marcus From: marcus@x4u.desy.de (Marcus Speh) Subject: Re: Hypertext WEB In-Reply-To: mckearney_s's message of Tue, 5 Oct 1993 09:05:44 +0100 Message-ID: Sender: usenet@dscomsa.desy.de (usenet) Organization: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany. References: <16232532@MVB.SAIC.COM> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 13:03:19 GMT >>>>> On Tue, 5 Oct 1993 09:05:44 +0100, mckearney_s said: |> There have been some comments about bypertext being the 'next' |> extension of LP. When I tell people about LP many say that hypertext |> would be even better. I can see that jumping around code, etc is |> likely to be useful but I also think that the printed book form of the |> LP is one of its advantages. There are already nice tools to get a beautifully printed book from raw HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The WWW User's Guide is an example. HyperText seems to be convertable to almost anything, to and fro: I use the texi2html, latex2html tools almost daily. |> What do others think of hypertext as the |> 'next' thing in LP? Should it be the obvious direction to go? It |> would probably sell LP in a big way. I agree. Eric van Ammers has expressed his interest in this direction, and we had several discussions on this on the mailing list. I remember Stephen Cross had once promised to come up with something in this direction, but I haven't heard his voice recently. I'll be happy to link to any experiment in this direction in my LitProg pages on the DESY World Wide Web server. -- ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Marcus Speh, II.Inst.Theor.Physik,Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg,Germany Phone: +49-40 8998 2178, Fax: +49-40 8998 2267, Private: +49-40 801392 E-mail: , ======================================================================= From dentato@aleph.ing.uniroma1.it Tue Oct 5 23:57:27 1993 Path: dscomsa!news.dkrz.de!news.rrz.uni-hamburg.de!math.fu-berlin.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!news.service.uci.edu!unogate!mvb.saic.com!litprog From: dentato@aleph.ing.uniroma1.it Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: Re: Hypertext WEB Message-ID: <9310051042.AA01691@aleph> Date: Tue, 05 Oct 93 11:42:28 +0100 Organization: Litprog<==>Comp.Programming.Literate Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Lines: 37 Hi mckearney_s, you told us: > would be even better. I can see that jumping around code, etc is > likely to be useful but I also think that the printed book form of the > LP is one of its advantages. What do others think of hypertext as the > 'next' thing in LP? Should it be the obvious direction to go? It > would probably sell LP in a big way. Yes, I think that hypertext is the right direction to go. IMO we need something to quickly browse the code. The printed form is very useful only when you look at a literate program for the first time. After that I think would be better if we had an hypertext format to watch out the changes. Then we could reprint the code for the next programmer! I don't think that one exclude the other, we simply should have both! > Also, I have tried introducing LP to people who use Visual Basic, > Smalltalk and other interface-oriented languages. The problem is LP > does not fit this style because the interface to the language is so > important. > [...] > How does LP fit in with the new visual languages that still require a lot of > coding but which are interface driven? I don't think LP is well suited for visual languages. I even find difficult to insert literate tools in an integrated environment (say Turbo Pascal). For me it's ok for I work always in command line environment. For example I'd like to know how Ross manage to use his FunnelWeb with Think C, I think he had to solve a lot of problems to do it! ___ __ Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza" //_/// \ Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica // \//__/ Via Buonarroti 12 00184 Roma (Italy) Remo Dentato tel: +39-6-4873689 fax: +39-6-4873628 email: dentato@cadgroup.ing.uniroma1.it ======================================================================= From ae1181t@stnfor.ae.ge.com Tue Oct 5 23:57:31 1993 Path: dscomsa!news.dkrz.de!rzsun2.informatik.uni-hamburg.de!news.rrz.uni-hamburg.de!math.fu-berlin.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!news.service.uci.edu!unogate!mvb.saic.com!litprog From: ae1181t@stnfor.ae.ge.com (Osman F Buyukisik) Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: Re: Hypertext WEB Message-ID: <9310051214.AA03716@stnfor.ae.ge.com> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 08:14:01 -0400 Organization: Litprog<==>Comp.Programming.Literate Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Lines: 12 I think LP would integrate nicely into well thought out integrated systems (i.e. oberon, smalltalk) where the system understands typesetting. I think I saw Eric Ammers mention that one LP system exists for smalltalk80. For VB dont know of one, and if VB does not type set (different fonts, chars...) then forget it. Hypertext is ok but the terminals should be able to show typeset stuff. What good is it if it can only work with characters. For a complete LP program the author may include diagrams, charts, and typeset text including equations/math. I use xfig to generate postscript charts, and insert them into my nuweb document (which uses LaTeX). It would not look nice on a plain vt100 terminal! Osman ======================================================================= From snead@mdd.comm.mot.com Tue Oct 5 23:57:35 1993 Path: dscomsa!news.dkrz.de!news.rrz.uni-hamburg.de!math.fu-berlin.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!news.service.uci.edu!unogate!mvb.saic.com!litprog From: Gregory Snead Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: Re: Hypertext WEB Message-ID: <9310051600.AA14483@bb09c.mdd.comm.mot.com> Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1993 09:00:37 -0700 Organization: Litprog<==>Comp.Programming.Literate Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Lines: 39 I'm a great fan of online documentation, but I also recognise the unavoidable need to read something on paper. My perfect LP world would be to view the program in my editor as it looks when printed (typeset, figures and all) with navigational aids like hypertext links. When I print out the program, I want it to look as it did in my editor. I also want tables of contents, indexes, lists of functions, global variables any anything else that is useful. All these should be hyperlinked to their source. If there are DFD's and the like, I want to see them too. These are tools used to design the code and, if done correctly, used to enhance the design. These do not, however, replace good written descriptions and comments. I use the editor CRISP. It has a good macro language to program in. The closest it comes to my ideal is that various language elements (i.e. key words, strings, numbers) are displayed in different colors. The two navigational aids are tags and bookmarks. p.s. for those of you who spell like I do, try a spell checker. It'll catch lots of misspellings (except word choice, e.g. too instead of two). I would be nice if I could also pipe stuff through a grammar checker. Folks, what we write in our code has to be read by someone at a later time. If it is written poorly, the chances of it being understood by others (or yourself, later) are greatly increased. To me this is as important as the visual legibility (e.g. typesetting). E.g. I caught two misspelling with this email. I used CRISP, which integrates Unix spell as an editor command. What can I say, I love this editor! > Gregory Snead snead@mdd.comm.mot.com < > "...[Beauty] can be a dustbin with a shaft of sunlight across < > it or it can be a rose in the gutter." -- Charlie Chaplin < ======================================================================= From coates@spectro.jussieu.fr Tue Oct 5 23:57:36 1993 Path: dscomsa!news.dkrz.de!news.rrz.uni-hamburg.de!math.fu-berlin.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!news.service.uci.edu!unogate!mvb.saic.com!litprog From: coates@spectro.jussieu.fr Newsgroups: comp.programming.literate Subject: Re: Hypertext WEB Message-ID: <9310051551.AA03902@lutidine.spectro.jussieu.fr> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 93 16:51:02 +0100 Organization: Litprog<==>Comp.Programming.Literate Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Lines: 60 Dear Literati, Stephen Mc Kearney wrote: > There have been some comments about bypertext being the 'next' > extension of LP. When I tell people about LP many say that hypertext > would be even better. I can see that jumping around code, etc is > likely to be useful but I also think that the printed book form of the > LP is one of its advantages. What do others think of hypertext as the > 'next' thing in LP? Should it be the obvious direction to go? It > would probably sell LP in a big way. > > Also, I have tried introducing LP to people who use Visual Basic, > Smalltalk and other interface-oriented languages. The problem is LP > does not fit this style because the interface to the language is so > important. VB is a particular problem in this respect. Any comments > on this? (Except "VB is rubbish", etc.). How does LP fit in with > the new visual languages that still require a lot of coding but which > are interface driven? I think that hypertext is the next big buzz, and hence unavoidable. As for being able to print things out as well, I note that 'texinfo' files can (in principle at least) be both printed out and used in a hypertext fashion; that is to say that the two ideas of hypertext and literate printed output can be combined, with appropriate forthought. Indeed, the same applies (at least to some extent) to the help files one finds under Microsoft Windows, which are hypertext, but can be printed out, being based originally on RTF sources. Indeed, I have sometimes wondered, on the subject of whether some extensions to TeX might eventually be due, not only of commands for colour, but also about hypertext, though perhaps these are best handled by `specials' passed to the appropriate `dvihyper' program and ignored by other dvi converters. As for `visual' languages, I find it heard to believe that LP wouldn't be useful, for describing at the very least the design methodology underlying an interface, so that those who follow can remain consistent. The biggest problem, as I see it, is how one could integrate LP with such tools, short of writing a new tool with LP in mind. The Borland tools that I have used under Windows don't provide comment fields for the interface structures, so there is no obvious method for documenting the design decisions for the interface, other than in a separate (non-LP) document. Of course, you don't *need* to use such tools to create resources for systems such as Windows, but I like them, and I bet the majority does too. Anyway, just a few thought ;-) . Cheers, Tony. ________________________________________________________________________________ A.B.Coates (Tony) Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Hertzienne de l'ENS Universite Pierre et Marie Curie Case 74, 4 place Jussieu Email: coates@spectro.jussieu.fr F-75252 Paris CEDEX 05 Telephone: +33 1 44 27 44 09 France Fax: +33 1 44 27 38 45 "J'ai mes opinions. L'universite a ses opinions. L'intersection de ces deux ensembles est probablement vide." "I have my opinions. The university has its opinions. The intersection of these two sets is probably empty." ________________________________________________________________________________