#4 Comment syntax not general enough

[Dominique de Waleffe]

I have used nuweb for years and contributed to some
changes a long time ago. I am glad to see that someone
took over maintenance of nuweb.

A long long time ago I had sent Preston a patch to
implement the comment syntax @%.

The idea was to be able to completely comment
anything, including a complete scrap.

In the description of your current version, the comment
syntax is only allowed within the body of a scrap. To me
this is wrong as there is still no way to fully comment
out a full scrap, say for keeping a tentative attempt or
something like in:

@d stuff @{
foo
@}

@%@d stuff @{
@%foobar
@%@}

Simply using % in fornt wont work because nuweb will
expand some command onto several latex line, with
only the first one commented out.

So @% should be allowed anywhere, not only within a
scrap body.

[Paul Huygen]

Logged In: YES
user_id=211687

Another problem is, that @% no longer ignores the following
newline charater like the "%" character does in TeX files.

When I look at the source code, it seems to me, that "@%"
could be easily handled at the lowest input level, in
function "source_get()" (file input.c).

For instance, in scrap @<Handle an ``at'' character@>, add
in the switch statement the case:

case '%': @< eat at-percent comment @>
break;

and add a scrap @<eat at-percent comment@>:

<quote>
Ignore `\verb|@@|\verb|%| characters. Read everything
including the next newline character. increment number of
lines read.

@d eat at-percent comment @{@%
while (c != '\n'){
c = getc(source_file);
};
source_line++;
c = getc(source_file);
source_last = c;
source_peek = getc(source_file);
@| @}
</quote>

(excuses for the poor C. I am not a C programmer)

The "@%" handling at higher levels can then be removed.

Paul Huygen