It might be wise in the next revision of Haskell to support literate
programming and xml metadata compatible with the .net xml scheme. The
metada can include all sorts of usefull stuff, like documentation tools can
read (i.e. visual studio etc.) including custom metadata that might be
haskell specific.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Olaf Chitil [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 3:09 AM
> To: Mark P Jones
> Cc: Koen Claessen; The Haskell Mailing List
> Subject: Re: Literate Programming
>
>
>
> I agree with Mark that literate programming is messed up in Haskell. I
> think that it is even worse than he says and hence I don't use it
> anymore at all.
>
> Mark P Jones wrote:
> > The literate programming conventions using leading '>'s (also known
> > as "Bird tracks" or the "inverted comment convention") go back to
> > Orwell,
> > ...
> > This was the only commenting convention in
> > Orwell.
>
> It is very interesting that using '>'s was the *only* commenting
> convention in Orwell. In contrast Haskell has '>'s and
> begin{code}...\end{code}, but also the more conventional -- and {- ...
> -}.
>
> As Mark pointed out so clearly, the idea of literate programming is to
> have program and documentation in one file and be able to generate
> various forms of output from it. You can do this from Haskell programs
> that use -- and/or {- ... -} just as well.
>
> The only slight advantages of the inverted commenting conventions are
> that they are easier to parse and that they stress the
> importance of the
> comments.
>
> Personally I prefer braces such as begin{code}...\end{code} and {- ...
> -} for longer program/comment snippets. So I end up using
> mostly {- ...
> -}.
>
> > (Markup is often required for text too; use whatever seems
> appropriate
> > (and sufficiently general) for the application you have in mind.)
>
> Here is a problem. Which markup language should you use?
> Latex, because
> you want to generate latex documents? A markup language that your
> generator tool translates into any other language like latex,
> html,...?
>
> Cheers,
> Olaf
>
> --
> OLAF CHITIL,
> Dept. of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
> URL: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~olaf/
> Tel: +44 1904 434756; Fax: +44 1904 432767
>
