Simple Literate Tool Files

This literate programming tool copies out-of-order source code from a text file and writes it in-order to another text file.  Its purpose is to assist programmers who wish to use the literate programming approach using plain text instead of TeX.

The program looks for text located between tags formatted like this:  <<tagName>>

It exports the text it finds into temporary files and then re-assembles the contents of those files in order.  To define the proper output order, the program first looks for a list of tags (without brackets) surrounded by <<def>> and <</def>> tags.  The final output will contain text from each declared tag, in the order given by the tag list within the <<def>> section.  The program will give an error and quit if a tag is not used, if an undeclared tag is used, if a tag is misspelled or if a section of text begins with one tag but is ended by another tag.  Tags are case-insensitive, they may not contain spaces and they may not be indented by tabs.

To install this tool, unzip literate.zip and place its contents into this path:  c:\program files\literate tool\

This is a command-line program, so to use it, follow this format:

	"c:\program files\literate tool\literate.exe" inputFilePathAndName outputFilePathAndName

If you like, you can also add c:\program files\literate tool\ to your PATH, so that you don't have to type that part over and over again.


This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html>.