Scientific Literate Programming using LaTeX

Context

This is a code fontifier based upon tfontedpr by Van Jacobson of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (van@lbl-rtsg.arpa). Whereas tfontedpr uses the tgrind style only, sltex uses an improved "tgrinds" LaTeX style for literate programming using standard LaTeX.

Purpose

Do write comments in LaTeX in your source code, and get a pretty listing with high level comments. This means, you can write code at the same time you describe the algorithms using Maths Formulas, including graphics, tables... all what LaTeX offers !

Usage

The use of this program is very easy, with many command line options that overload a user's configuration file. The use of various LaTeX styles is made this way.

Genesis

The idea came to me in 1995, while doing a PhD Thesis in Numerical Analysis, where I was implementing a new method to solve frequency Maxwell equations. I had to write the algorithms, then to implement. Having comments in LaTeX inside the fortran source files was very helpful. Also, when a variable appears many times, instead of describing it each time, I could place the description in an included LaTeX file. So, when an array changes meaning, changing the description is made only once. It is only recently I compiled tfontedpr on Linux, using the port made by Luis A. Fernandes. I added a clean 8bit support. The program architecture is a bit complicated:

Platforms

Working platforms are SunOS and Solaris since 1996, Linux since now. It should also work on alpha-processors, HPPA-Risc. It probably works on Windows.

Audience

The targeted audience is the one of people typesetting documents in LaTeX and writting source code (C, C++, fortran, Perl...) so mainly scientits, this is why it is called slptex, that stands for "Scientific Literate Programming using LaTeX".