Great news! Maybe we should spread the word a bit?

Edward McGuire <metaed@metaed.com> wrote:

> The ability to approve posts to this moderated group has been restored,
> by migrating the moderating software to a new host. Thank you to charter
> moderator Dr Norman Ramsey, and to the Big8 board, for helping make this
> possible.
>
>
>
> MODERATOR INFO: comp.programming.literate
>
> Article submission address: cpl@newjersey.metaed.com
> Moderation team contact: cpl-board@newjersey.metaed.com
> Technical team contact: cpl-admin@newjersey.metaed.com
>
>
>
> CHARTER: comp.programming.literate
>
> 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.