Re: [ANN] LuaDoc 3.0 Released

[David Kastrup <dak@...>]

"Frans Slothouber" <frans.slothouber@gmail.com> writes:

> On 15/08/07, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>> "Frans Slothouber" <frans.slothouber@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > The only tool that allows you to put both the big picture and detail
>> > information in the source code are literate programming tools, such
>> > as cweb or nuweb.  But these work in such a different way that they
>> > do not integrate well with debuggers and editors, or IDEs.
>>
>> Donald Knuth _championed_ Literate Programming, and yet there is a
>> TeXbook and a METAFONTbook to go with "TeX, The Program" and
>> "METAFONT, The Program", and the latter two are not really useful
>> without having worked with the former two.
>>
>> Indeed, for most people it is the latter which are dispensable.
>
> I indeed own the latter two.  I don't have "TeX, The Program" nor
> "METAFONT, The Program".

So you own the _former_ ones.

> But I guess they both describe the design and implementation
> details.

You can get those two books (modulo per-page indexes and maybe a
preface, don't remember) by running

weave tex.web
weave metafont.web
tex tex
tex metafont
dvips tex
dvips metafont

I really recommend that you do this (tex.web and metafont.web should
be available with your TeX distribution, but they are of course also
available on every TeX server).

That will both give you an excellent example of what you are talking
about as well as show you the limitations of that approach.

> So you might be compare a user manual with a design document which
> is not a valid comparison.

No need to guess.  Please check the above out.  It will make the
discussion so much more worthwhile.  And it definitely provides good
reading, anyway.

> Only for very small projects you can combine all these documents in
> one document.

Can we agree that TeX is not a very small project?

-- 
David Kastrup