tex.web – Version 3.141592653
I&#x27;ve been thinking a lot about literate programming, and I&#x27;m positive that Knuth-style LP&#x27;s worst enemy is TeX.  Realistically, an LP system is going to need to prioritize the reading experience of the input format itself, not just the output format after running it through a typesetting system (no matter how powerful the typesetting system might be).  Consider Gruber on Markdown, and this 2014 blog post about (what became) CommonMark:<p>&gt; A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions (Gruber)[...] forks of Markdown, such as GitHub Flavored Markdown and MultiMarkdown extend standard Markdown in various ways, and are targeted for their particular use cases. GitHub’s implementation for code blocks, for example, looks like something a group of programmers would want to have; it looks more like code than text &lt;<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shindoisshin.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;9&#x2F;6&#x2F;standard-markdown-controversy" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shindoisshin.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;9&#x2F;6&#x2F;standard-markdown-cont...</a>&gt;<p>Consider this file.  Those who are expected to interact with it in this form includes Knuth and his collaborators—the few who have sent in corrections—and nobody else.  You aren&#x27;t expected to read a literate program like this.  In an ideal world, where we had computing better figured out, Knuth wouldn&#x27;t interact with it like this, either.<p>The second thing to address would be the use of &quot;static&quot; target languages like C and Pascal.  A literate programming work should aim to be more like the experience of programming by configuring program entities (I hesitate to say &quot;objects&quot;)—like Self, except powered by the written word.  Among the negative ways to react to the last remark would be to say, &quot;&#x27;Self, except powered by the written word&#x27;?  So pretty much the opposite of Self, then.  Basically, what we already have.&quot;  But this is too superficial.  Consider Jef Raskin on &quot;the woes of IDEs&quot;: &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;queue.acm.org&#x2F;detail.cfm?id=864034" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;queue.acm.org&#x2F;detail.cfm?id=864034</a>&gt;