This guide introduces a suite of programs for literate programming. They support documentation as a natural part of programming; a program's organization focusses on understanding by humans.
If you installing this system as a standalone entity, please see section See lit-install, near the end.
This document begins with a few words about literate programming, the objectives of this system, and the Neat Stuff that this system is supposed to do for you (i.e., cheap, tasteless self-promotion). See section See Highlights.
The real goods come next, most notably:
It would be a good idea to understand the rudiments of GNU Info files
before reading much further -- type
YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THIS SYSTEM ARE MOST WELCOME.
DISCLAIMER: "Literate programming" is not my(WDP)/our area of expertise. This system has been developed mainly to suit our needs and has evolved on a grease-the-squeaky-wheel principle. However, we wouldn't bother to document it if we didn't think there was something to it!
APRIL91 PROPOSALS: I am thinking about some changes to the system, NOT YET IMPLEMENTED. Discussion about most (all?) of them is gathered together in section See april91-proposals. (You can find all discussion of proposed changes by grepping for "APRIL91".)
SEPT92 THOUGHTS: Still haven't really worked on this system. I have typed a few further thoughts at the obvious place. I have fixed one or two bugs, and I have incorporated Adriaan Joubert's (adriaan@dcs.qmw.ac.uk) stuff for "literate Fortran," for which I am most grateful. (See, it really is easy to extend :-)
For more information about "real" literate programming, the bibliography of literate programming in the (approx: ToDo) March 1991 SIGPLAN Notices may be of use.