[plt-scheme] Literate scribbling question

DrScheme's indentation mode needs lots of scribble-related help, no
doubt about that!

I think it would be possible to add a macro that is like chunk but
where you write

@chunk-define[(f x) (+ x 1)]

which also could have been written:

@(chunk-define (f x)
    (+ x 1))

that expands into

@chunk[(define (f x) (+ x 1))]

which is at least a step closer.

Robby

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:01 AM, Anthony Cowley <acowley at seas.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Thanks for the quick reply, Eli!
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:41 AM, Eli Barzilay<eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
>> On May 21, Anthony Cowley wrote:
>>> I was experimenting with the scribble/lp language, and found the
>>> need for the @chunks rather frustrating as they take up horizontal
>>> space and introduce a required chunk label.
>>
>> IIRC, it should work with something like @chunk[foo
>>
>>  (blah blah)
>>
>> ] just fine, does that help?
>
> That's the way I started out doing it when typing it in, but it's not
> DrScheme's default indentation pattern (so cmd-i or just hitting tab
> gives something worse).
>
>>> be.  I'd like the labels to just come from define forms (perhaps
>>> with the option of me labeling other chunks for inclusion in the
>>> table of contents),
>>
>> How would you label other chunks?  How would you deal with text that
>> happens to have "(define ...)"?  And what about `define-values',
>> `define-syntax', etc -- and some random macro that expands to a
>> `define'?
>
> If I had to give up sub-chunks then I would do so; I'm really looking
> for something as minimally invasive as possible. I'm just suggesting
> that it may be possible to retain a similar chunk functionality
> without requiring that all scheme code be in labeled chunks. My
> complaint is that writing,
>
> @chunk[<foo>
> (define (foo x) x)
> ]
>
> adds quite a bit of syntax to the program, potentially messes up
> indentation, perhaps leaves a dangling square bracket closing the
> whole form, and duplicates the function name. 99.9% of the time I just
> want the function name as the chunk label, so it would seem like a
> good default *if* one can pull it out, which lead to my comment about
> define forms.
>
> If pulling out function names from program syntax is too hard, I'd
> give up the hyperlinked table of contents just to have the kind of
> nicely formatted document scribble produces with text and code
> interleaved. It seemed like possibly low hanging fruit to
> automatically pull out a label from whatever define forms seem
> appropriate, but I really don't know how hard that would be.
>
>>> and I'd also prefer to not have to annotate a valid syntactic form
>>> at all. This latter is perhaps unworkable, hence this email: Could
>>> we switch the reader into Scheme mode when encountering an
>>> un-escaped left-parenthesis, and remain in text mode at all other
>>> times?
>>
>> But there could be valid chunks of code that have no parens around
>> them, and besides, the whole point of the scribble syntax is to make
>> escapes minimally necessary -- either scheme mode or text mode with
>> an unambiguous way to switch between the two.
>
> My whole desire is to minimize escapes and additional syntax. After
> writing up my documentation with scribble/lp it didn't look very much
> like plain text or normal Scheme code to me. I then tried looking at
> it if I only had to use an @ in front of Scheme code, and it looked
> much better. Then I realized that I only used parentheses in my plain
> text once, so why not force the use of an escape character there,
> rather than on the dozen Scheme forms in the file? I would have
> guessed that a large majority of Scheme code does have parens around
> it, so why not levy the escape tax on the code that doesn't? For
> example, in text mode, @scheme[2] would be a scheme 2, (define (foo x)
> x) would be a scheme function, but something like \(this is a
> parenthetical aside) would just be a plain text parenthetical remark.
> If such a reader could be used, then I think most literate Scheme
> programming wouldn't have any annotations at all.
>
> However, I believe you if you say that it's just impossible due to
> non-simplistic forms (e.g. define-syntax), but scribble/lp is so close
> to being a lightweight literate style already that it struck me as a
> real possibility.
>
> Anthony
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