[plt-scheme] Re: forwarded message from Matthew Flatt

I have been working on hacking LAML's SchemeDoc system to produce doc.txt
files from source code comments.  If you like, I can send you my code, but
it is not really distribution ready yet (and since this is just something
I have been working on for fun, it might never be).  If you are interested,
you should read about SchemeDoc since you will have to convert your comments
to its format (see http://www.cs.auc.dk/~normark/schemedoc/).  The doc.txt
file that my code produces is basically a simplified (e.g. no table
of contents), text version of the web page that SchemeDoc produces.

Details for those who are interested:
LAML's SchemeDoc system produces web pages from code comments much like
Javadocs.  SchemeDoc works in two steps: first, it extracts the comments
and some other information (e.g. the names of each function's arguments)
and stores them in a list format call manlsp; second, it converts the
manlsp list into a web page.  I wrote a function to convert the manlsp
list to a doc.txt page instead.
The largest limitations on the system now are:
1) SchemeDoc was not written with modules or units in mind so it dies when
one is found in the source code.  I have hacked it so that it no longer
dies on modules, but I still need to work on having modules displayed
well.  I might get to units.
2) SchemeDoc will only work on one file at a time.  LAML has  a tool for
combining more than one SchemeDoc web page, but I have not worked with it
yet.  Thus, my system cannot combine multiple code files into one doc.txt
file (but you can put them together by hand without too much work).

Michael Carl Tschantz


>> Are there tools to generate doc.txt files from source
>> code comments?

>Not currently.