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The noweb tool for literate programming
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This is version 2.13 of ``noweb'', a simple, extensible literate- programming tool. noweb is available from the Github repository https://github.com/nrnrnr/noweb, and it is mirrored by the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. It is distributed under the BSD-2 open-souce license. Other helpful information can be found on noweb's home page at http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/noweb. The most convenient way to get noweb is to install it from a package; the procedure for building noweb from source dates from 1989, and it is both baroque and brittle. If you must build noweb from source, change to the `src' directory and follow the instructions in the file INSTALL. (Windows users, you're on your own, but you might find it useful to check https://web.archive.org/web/20190415151640/http://www.jim-pettigrew.com/noweb/install.) WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.13 Version 2.13 fixes issues #24 and #26 at https://github.com/nrnrnr/noweb/issues. Both were compatibility issues with TeXlive 2022. WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.12 Version 2.12 now has a dual license: in addition to noweb's original license, it is licensed under the BSD 2-clause license. Version 2.12 no longer defines a getline() function, which conflicted with a new POSIX standard. And it no longer uses the deprecated tempnam(3). Version 2.12 contains a number of enhancements to the sl2h program and l2h filter, which convert from LaTeX to HTML. They now deal with \suspend and \resume from \usepackage{mdwlist}, and they also convert some TeX ligatures to HTML entities, most notably the -- and --- ligatures. Thanks to Christian Lynbeck, 2.12 also has new Emacs Lisp code that better supports font-lock. Other than that, 2.12 fixes a number of bugs, the most notable of which is that the emacs noweb-mode command is now compatible with Emacs 25 desktop-read and desktop-save. INTRODUCTION --- WHAT IS NOWEB, ANYWAY? noweb is designed to meet the needs of literate programmers while remaining as simple as possible. Its primary advantages are simplicity, extensibility, and language-independence. noweb uses 5 control sequences to WEB's 27. The noweb manual is only 3 pages; an additional page explains how to customize its LaTeX output. noweb works ``out of the box'' with any programming language, and supports TeX, latex, and HTML back ends. A back end to support full hypertext or indexing takes about 250 lines; a simpler one can be written in 40 lines of awk. Noweb does not prettyprint natively, but supports prettyprinting through such third-party filters as pretzel and dpp. noweb has been distributed free of charge for thirty years, and it is one of the world's most widely used literate-programming tools. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of lines of code in such languages as awk, C, C++, Haskell, Icon, Lua, Modula-3, Objective Caml, PAL, perl, Promela, and Standard ML. If you already know you want to use noweb, you need only install it and read the manual page. If you're just curious about noweb, read the paper that appeared in the September 1994 issue of IEEE Software. (If you can't get Software, send me a postcard and I'll send you a reprint.) A nice, brief tutorial appeared in the October 1997 issue of Linux Journal (but beware that chunk syntax is <<name>> and not <<name>). If you're brand new to literate programming, check out the FAQ for the USENET newsgroup comp.programming.literate. There are also some resources available through the noweb home page: http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/noweb WHAT YOU GET IN THIS DISTRIBUTION This distribution contains the following directories: binaries Pre-built distributions containing binaries and documentation contrib software contributed by noweb users examples sample noweb filters and programs in different languages src Source code and documentation (including FAQ) for noweb Where appropriate, these directories have README files of their own. BINARY DISTRIBUTIONS MAY NOT ALWAYS BE UP-TO-DATE, especially DOS distributions. EXTENSIBILITY noweb provides extensibility by using the Unix toolkit philosophy. The ``noweb,'' ``notangle,'' and ``noweave'' commands are built from pieces, which are then assembled in pipelines using shell scripts. The pieces include: markup convert noweb file from human syntax to tool syntax unmarkup inverse of markup totex convert from tool syntax to TeX/latex markup tohtml convert from tool syntax to HTML markup nt `tangle' the tool form of the noweb file mnt discover roots, then act like nt noidx insert indexing and cross-reference information finduses finds uses of identifiers These pieces are combined by the scripts in the src/shell directory to provide more than just weaving and tangling: noweb analog of nuweb notangle analog of TANGLE noweave analog of WEAVE nountangle tangle, but keep interleaved documentation in comments noroots print names of all root chunks in a noweb file nocount count number of lines of code and documentation. nodefs extract defined identifiers for noweave -indexfrom noindex build an external index for multi-file documents WEAVING --- A TAR PIT The worst aspect of literate programming is the enormous amount of time wasted wrangling over what ``woven'' output should look like. Although noweb does no prettyprinting, it is not entirely immune--- several people have complained about noweave's output or have sent me changes that add more options to noweave. I resisted for years, but with version 2.5 I finally succumbed. I let the number of options to noweave double, and I have provided for too many options and hooks for customizing the latex output. I won't let it happen again. noweb doesn't try to be all things to all programmers, but it is very easy to change. If you don't like noweave's formatting, you can read tex/support.nw to learn how to customize it; look for the words ``style hook.'' (Reading noweb.sty directly is not recommended.) For simple formatting, it might be easier to throw away noweave and make your own. To help you get started, the shell directory contains noweave.simple, a simplified version of noweave that Dave Hanson created for use with C programs (it can't handle code with @ signs). The Noweb Hacker's Guide (xdoc/guide.tex) explains the intermediate language that noweb uses to represent literate programs. The intermediate language makes it possible to extend noweave with a language-dependent prettyprinter, as shown by contributions of an Icon prettyprinter by Kostas Oikonomou and a guarded-command prettyprinter by Conrado Martinez-Parra. (I haven't written a prettyprinter myself because my experience with Spider left me thinking that prettyprinting is far more trouble than it's worth.) Further contributions of prettyprinters are welcome. noweb comes with two cross-referencers for use with noweave. The standard one is written in Icon, because Icon offers excellent functionality and performance. Because Icon is not available on all platforms, I profide an alternative, but inferior cross-referencer written in awk. See the INSTALL file for details. Cross-referencing makes formatting even more of a tar pit; the cross-referencer itself takes about 300 lines, and extensive LaTeX support is also required. I haven't made the attempt to write cross-reference code for plain TeX. Anyone who has ideas for reducing the number of options or for other ways to restore sanity to the situation is urged to write to nr@cs.tufts.edu. INDEX AND IDENTIFIER CROSS-REFERENCE Noweb creates identifier cross-references so that you can click on an identifier and jump to its definition (if you're using printed LaTeX output, a footnote gives you the page number of the definition). To noweb, any string of nonwhite characters can be an identifier. A human being or a language-dependent tool must mark definitions of identifiers; noweb finds the uses using a language-independent algorithm. The algorithm relies on an idea taken from the lexical conventions of Standard ML. Characters are divided into three classes: alphanumerics, symbols, and delimiters. If an identifier begins with an alphanumeric, it must be delimited on the left by a symbol or a delimiter. If it begins with a symbol, it must be delimited on the left by an alphanumeric or a delimiter. If it begins with a delimiter, there are no restrictions on the character immediately to the left. Similar rules apply on the right-hand side. The default classifications are chosen to make sense for commonly used programming languages, so that noweb will not recognize `zip' when it sees `zippy', or `++' when it sees `++:='. This trick works surprisingly well, but it does not prevent noweb from spotting identifiers in comments or string literals. The basic assumption in noweb is that a language-dependent filter will identify definitions automatically. Filters for Icon, TeX, and yacc all take about 30 lines of Icon code and are included in the noweb distribution; if you write a filter of your own, you can put it in the $LIB directory with a name like `autodefs.pascal'. Try `noweave -showautodefs' for a complete list of such filters. If the automatic filter does not work well for you, or if there is no filter available for your language, I recommend that you mark definitions using backticks (`) in your source code, and use `-filter btdefn' with both noweave and notangle. noweave -index works well for short programs, but nodefs, noindex, and noweave -indexfrom are there for large multi-file programs. See the noindex man page for details. NOTES src/xdoc/techrep.* contains an early, almost unrecognizable version of a paper describing noweb that appeared in IEEE Software in September, 1994. You are probably better off writing me for a reprint of the Software paper. (Send a postcard!) The Noweb Hacker's Guide, which appears in src/xdoc/guide.*, documents the representation of noweb files that is used by the noweb tools, in case you want to write any tools of your own. Simple tools (e.g. count the number of lines of interleaved documentation) are trivial. If you write any tools, or you want tools written (e.g. prettyprinters, index generators), let me know. The icon directory contains Icon versions of most pipeline stages. If you want to adapt noweb to work with a text processor other than TeX or latex, they might provide a better starting point. Perhaps the whole system should have been written in Icon from the beginning, but I'm not going to do it over. Icon is available by anonymous ftp from cs.arizona.edu. Thanks to Preston Briggs for the Aho-Corasick recognizer, and for helpful discussions. Thanks to Dave Hanson for cpif. Thanks to Dave Love for LaTeX wizardry. Thanks to Joseph Reynolds for prodding me to fix [[...]]. Thanks to Bill Trost for the original HTML back end. Thanks to Phil Bewig for the troff support. Thanks to Philip Miller and Lee Wittenberg for DOS binaries. Thanks to Paolo Ciccone for the Win32 binaries. Thanks to Hubert Chathi for picking up the Debian distribution. Send comments or questions to nr@cs.tufts.edu. I enjoy hearing from noweb users; if you have enjoyed noweb, why not send me a local postcard for my collection? My address is: Norman Ramsey Department of Computer Science Tufts University 161 College Avenue Medford, MA 02155 USA COPYRIGHT Noweb is copyright 1989-2018 by Norman Ramsey. All rights reserved. You may use and distribute noweb for any purpose, for free. You may modify noweb and create derived works, provided you retain the copyright notice, but the result may not be called noweb without my written consent. You may not sell noweb itself, but you may do anything you like with programs created with noweb.
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