literate comments

[Sean L. Palmer]

You could make a utility that just strips code out of XML, using the XML
nesting as indentation for the Haskell code.  Run it as a preprocessor.

It's hard to get stuff like that standardized though.  I imagine any kind of
development environment is free to pretty up or package the source however
it wants, so long as the compiler gets what it needs.  The easiest way to
make a standard is to make a tool that uses it.  Personally I would prefer
the kind of all-in-one package of code editor and XML packager/unpackager.
That way it all gets done transparently, behind the scenes, and I never have
to look at the mess.

Personally, not a big fan of LaTeX.  I don't understand the bias towards it.

Sean

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steffen Mazanek" <steffen.mazanek at unibw-muenchen.de>
To: <haskell at haskell.org>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: literate comments


> Hello,
>
> I have thought again about the relationship of Haskell
> and XML. Finally I come up with the following idea. Why
> not introduce a Haskell DTD? Not to gain better literate
> programming facilities, but to represent _real_ Haskell
> code in XML. Of course, no person would like to "program"
> Haskell in XML, but a uniform representation has its
> advantages nevertheless (cf. openmath [1]):
>
> * approved tools for further processing
> * separation of the presentation layer, pretty printing
> * interoperability
> * cross-linking (e.g., generating library summaries or
>   in the manner of funnelweb [2], but xml-style)
> * objects are often serializable as xml, too
>
> The following questions are still open for me:
>
> * would the literate programming facilities really be
>   improved? for now, Haskell plays nice with LaTeX, but
>   not at all with XML
> * possible advantages of xml schema?
>
> What do you think about this? Do you see even more
> advantages of this approach or would it be senseless
> work?
>
> Regards,
> Steffen Mazanek