Re: [Axiom-developer] Issues with documentation revisions

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

C Y wrote:
> --- Bill Page <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> There is at least one better tool than noweb: Leo
>>
>> http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html
>>
>> I believe that many of the design features of Leo would be beneficial
>> to the Axiom project.
>
> I took one run at Leo and bounced - I'm willing to try again, though. 
> I may have also thought of a specific example which might be a good
> test/showcase.
>
> In outputing TeX instead of ASCII art, there are any number of specific
> issues and design decisions that might need to be made on a per-topic
> basis - the use of the SI style package for correct formatting of units
> being once case I am aware of, another is the use of chemical packages
> for LaTeX when implementing chemistry related pamphlets. 
> Unfortunately, neither a centralized mechanism for all TeX style
> outputs nor spreading these things over many pamphlets is ideal - the
> centralized mechanism separates the TeX logic from the conceptual work
> that it is linked to, and the diluted method makes a specific display
> bug hard to track without knowing exactly what part of the codebase it
> relates to.
>
> Leo (if I understand it's concepts) could solve both of these problems.
>  If the tex output code is in one or several discrete chuncks, and its
> corresponding documentation is also organized this way, then it would
> be possible using Leo to assemble either a document with all tex output
> code in it (for output debugging) or a document with all code
> pertaining to (say) the unit concept, which is more logical for
> authoring and updating in a non-debugging context.  Both of these
> outputs could be consistent, latexable pamphlet files, just generated
> based on the focus of interest at the time of the query.
>
> Bill, is that a reasonable use case for Leo+Axiom?  You are far more
> fluent with it than I am.
I am just now trying to learn Leo. My first impression is that it is
*way* too integrated with Python. I'm on the Leo message forums, and
unless you're a Python hacker (which I'm not) most of it goes way over
your head.

I like what Leo is *trying* to be, and I suppose I'll learn how to make
it do what I want *eventually*. But for now, I've more or less fallen
back on more "manual" techniques in my attempts to do "literate
programming."

To be fair, the two languages I'm attempting to program in Leo are R and
Ruby, not Axiom and not Python. On the R side, I've had pretty good luck
with LyX ... it seems to edit the R noweb files (.rnw) directly and not
require a whole lot of messing around to make a usable document. For
now, though, Leo is just an outliner of ASCII text files and not a
"literate programming IDE" for R or Ruby. Good luck with it -- if any of
you have any pointers on how to use it without having to learn Python,
I'm all ears. :)