[m-dev.] Mercury front ends

[Michael Day]

> The one thing that I would really like to see (and have considered going
> ahead and having a crack at implementing myself) is literate source files.
> If these are implemented, then you can write your program in whatever
> crazy new aged whizz bang markup language of your choice, and it will
> work. Your program will be a compilable and also presentable document.

Making source an XML document is far more useful than a LaTeX document,
unless your concern is solely with printed documentation. Some mechanism
is needed to separate the meaning of source code from is presentation, as
far too much programmer time is wasted on idle bit twiddling that really
shouldn't be an issue. Why are we so eager to adopt semantics over syntax
divisions in any field other than our own? Text editors should not be used
for editing structured documents, particularly not those as highly
structured as source. The actual implementation of the XML front end can
easily be done as a script wrapper around the compiler, that feeds it
source in the format it expects, but the programmer should never have to
actually insert spaces and match brackets and format comments by hand.

Michael

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