Literate Programming

Sat Apr 9 06:45:55 EDT 2011

On Apr 8, 3:21 pm, Hans Georg Schaathun <h... at schaathun.net> wrote:
> Interesting tool, but it solves only part of the problem.
> I could use it as a replacement for pylit, but I would then still
> have the problem of commenting code within a block, which is a
> reST/sphinx problem.

I'm sorry; I don't understand "commenting code within a block" but I
wondered if it meant you were not fully familiar with the idea of the
web-type programs. Instead of looking to typeset the comments, you
uses chunks. Thus a <<main>> chunk may be something like (pyweb has
somewhat different syntax)
 <<main>>
 def main(argv=None,log=None):
 <<read command line argument>>
 <<handle options>>
 <<run driver routine>>
 <<report results>>
Before each chunk comes the description of what that chunk does.
Something like
 This routine factors $n$ finding any factors that are powers of a
prime number.
 <<run driver routine>>
 def driver(n,opt1,opt2):
 <<find square root>>
 <<factor>>
is a rough idea (here $n$ is a LaTeX; you can do HTML or RST). So you
are commenting the chunks, which can be blocks of the code.
> Alternatively, I could use pyweb directly with LaTeX.  However, then
> I would need to find or create macro packages which provide the
> features of reST directly in LaTeX.  Do you know of a good candidate?

What features?
Jim