WYSIWYG literate programming systems

From:	John Viega
Date:	02 Dec 1997

In the comp.programming.literate FAQ Norman Ramsey says there are no significant WYSIWYG literate programming systems in the public domain. Are there any such commercial systems? Also, what are the shortcomings of the public domain WYSIWYG systems that are out there (I saw one or two in the FAQ)?

From:	Steve Furlong
Date:	02 Dec 1997

I am familiar only with WinWordWEB. As a proof of concept, it's pretty good. The syntax and operation are similar to most WEB-derived products. However, there are several significant limitations:

Total output size is limited to I think 32K of text. (Might be 64K; I haven't used it in a while). I've written a variant with a few improvements; the one that matters for this item is that the user can specify the root chunk and target file name. This makes a limit of 32/64K per output file, which is not so bad.
Word really bites as a code editor. It's better than edlin, but beyond that I won't commit. I've fiddled with finding or writing a good text editor which can be fired up when you're in a code block, retaining Word's normal usage when writing the descriptive blocks. I've phrased that really badly; what I mean is, we would treat code chunks like embedded spreadsheets or something. Performance was terrible, though I guess with further development and a really hot computer it would be tolerable. I also tried writing macros to give Word good behavior as a (C++) code editor. Very unsatisfactory. Maybe I'm just spoiled by emacs and SlickEdit, but I just don't see this coming together.
You lose most ability to diff versions. Yes, you can save as RTF, but saved lines are still typically quite long, and it's hard to track down specific changes. You can also save as text just for diffing purposes, but that is hardly intuitive. Word's built-in versioning (underlining and crossing out changes) doesn't suffice, either.

There is also the disadvantage that, despite MS's desires, not everyone in the world uses WinWord. That might not be a problem in the environment where WinWord might be used for literate programming. Word's equation-handling features were adequate for my limited test purposes, but I can see brick walls there. I see no chance of Word acquiring the equation-setting capabilities of TeX and its kin. And all WYSIWYG editors would share the problem that authors would spend too much time fiddling with the appearance rather than writing the text and code. I support the use of non-WYSIWYG tools for just that reason.

From:	Lee Wittenberg
Date:	03 Dec 1997

As the author of WinWordWEB, I can speak for that system, but not for the others. Its main shortcoming is that it is merely a "proof of concept" program to demonstrate that such a thing is possible. It only does basic stuff (which actually is pretty useful), but more importantly, it is not supported at all (and is at least 3 versions of WinWord behind, desperately needing updating).

I am willing to turn it over to anyone who wants to turn it into a useful system, but have had no volunteers, and no one is willing to pay me (and provide the needed tools and references) to support it. I don't use WinWord myself, so I don't really want to spend all that money just to support WinWordWEB.