Directory of Literate Programming Resources

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Literate Programming (LP) was invented by Dr. Donald Knuth in the 1980s. It views programming as a mainly literary activity, where the main task is to concentrate on explaining to humans what the computer must do, and the program is a secondary message embedded in a resulting documentation Web. LP raises documentation from being an often neglected afterthought, to becoming the main principle of program organization. This involves using two different languages together: program source code, and a natural human language for documentation.

Subcategories

• Knuth, Donald

Resources in This Category

• Bibliography on Literate Programming

  http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/SE/litprog.html
  A part of the Computer Science Bibliography Collection.

• FunnelWeb Literate Programming Tool

  http://www.ross.net/funnelweb/
  Portable, production quality LP macro preprocessor, allows interweaving code and documentation for any programming language; emits HTML and TeX; runs on most platforms; Open source.

• FWEB

  http://w3.pppl.gov/~krommes/fweb_toc.html
  A WEB system of structured documentation for multiple languages, originally the F was for FORTRAN, but now handles C, C++, Fortran (F77, F90), RATFOR, TeX (somewhat), tries to implement WYSIWYG language-independent mode. Open source, GPL.

• Literate Programming

  http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/lp.html
  By Donald Knuth; University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN 0937073806. Description of original, seminal book on LP, by its creator. Treats WEB system.

• Literate Programming

  http://www.literateprogramming.com/
  Resources, consulting services, downloads, freeware for Windows 95/98/Me-NT/2000/XP; learn about the CWEB programming system; articles, books, CD, tools, news, links.

• Literate Programming

  http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?LiterateProgramming
  The WikiWiki entry point for related information and discussions.

• Literate Programming

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming
  Growing article, with links to many related topics. [Wikipedia]

• Literate Programming FAQ

  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/literate-programming-faq/
  Good place to start looking for information.

• Literate Programming in XML

  http://nwalsh.com/docs/articles/xml2002/lp/paper.html
  Article by Norman Walsh.

• Literate Programming Library

  http://www.desy.de/user/projects/LitProg.html
  A large collection of links to related resources.

• Literate Programming with XML

  http://literatexml.sourceforge.net/
  Provide tools to support Donald Knuth's Literate Programming using XML instead of TeX. Is not based on any specific DTD or programming language, but instead uses processing instructions for processing the literate programs.

• Literate Programming: Propaganda and Tools

  http://vasc.ri.cmu.edu/old_help/Programming/Literate/literate.html
  Overview of concepts, advocacy, and some ideas for applying LP.

• Noweb

  http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/noweb/
  Simple, extensible tool for Literate Programming.

• SGML/XML and Literate Programming

  http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlLitProg.html
  Information on applying SGML and XML to Literate Programming.

• The CWEB System of Structured Documentation

  http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cweb.html
  By Donald Knuth and Levy, describing a prominent system of Literate Programming.

• The Elucidative Programming Page

  http://www.cs.aau.dk/~normark/elucidative-programming/
  Literate programming variant; explanations embed no code, but display next to code, in Web browser; source files are not altered, explanations organized by whole abstraction, not free form; now supports Java, Scheme. Explanations, examples, downloads.

• The Java Elucidator

  http://elucidator.sourceforge.net/
  Elucidative Programming system for Java, has: web server, abstractor, database interface, Emacs major mode.

• The Nuweb System for Literate Programming

  http://nuweb.sourceforge.net/
  Descendant of the original, first written by Preston Briggs; description, downloads.

• xmLP

  http://xmlp.sourceforge.net/
  A Literate Programming tool for XML written in XSL-T.

Related Categories

• Home > Computers > Software > Typesetting > TeX

 

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