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FUNNELWEB MANUAL WEB PAGE
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=========================
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Copyright (c) Ross N. Williams 1992,1999. All rights reserved.
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Permission is granted to redistribute and use this manual in
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any medium, with or without modification, provided that all
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notices (including, without limitation, the copyright
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notice, this permission notice, any record of modification,
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and all legal notices) are preserved on all copies, that all
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modifications are clearly marked, and that modified versions
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are not represented as the original version unless all the
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modifications since the manual's original release by Ross N.
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Williams (www.ross.net) consist of translations or other
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transformations that alter only the manual's form, not its
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content. THIS MANUAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY
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LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND
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FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY
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<TITLE>2.2 Motivation For FunnelWeb</TITLE>
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<A HREF="index.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF"><B>Developer</B></FONT></A><BR>
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<A HREF="compile.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF">1 Compile</FONT></A><BR>
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<A HREF="design.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF">2 Design</FONT></A><BR>
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<A HREF="implement.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF">3 Implement</FONT></A><BR>
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<A HREF="modify.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF">4 Modify</FONT></A><BR>
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<A HREF="misc.html"><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF">5 Misc</FONT></A><BR>
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<P><FONT SIZE="5">2.2 Motivation For FunnelWeb</FONT><BR>
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<P>During 1986, I discovered Donald
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Knuth's <SAMP>WEB</SAMP> literate
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programming system in the form of Jon
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Bentley's <I>Programming
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Pearls</I> column in
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the ACM</I> <STRONG>[Bentley86]</STRONG>. This prompted me to
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obtain a copy of the report on the Web
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system<STRONG>[Knuth83]</STRONG> and to try out the WEB program.
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<P>WEB was the best system that I had seen for producing
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printed and online, inline documentation. To me the most
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extraordinary aspect of the system was its success despite
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the fact that it had been built into the horribly antiquated
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file/batch processing systems that we all know and love
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(and use). I had imagined sophisticated documentation
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systems before this time, but had always assumed that they
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would be parts of complex programming environments. Knuth
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showed that, to some extent, it can be done using 1960s
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software technology (excluding the 1980s typesetting
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<P>The WEB system was enticing and promising, but to me
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suffered from many drawbacks, many of which Knuth had
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categorized as advantages. The following highly subjective list
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of disadvantages formed a springboard for the construction
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<LI> WEB can only process Pascal programs.
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<LI> WEB can produce only one output file. In many
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instances it is desirable to generate more than one output
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<LI> WEB enforces Knuth's individual style of
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indentation. WEB supplies commands to over-ride the
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automatic indentation, but it is an uphill battle and the
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code becomes clogged up with format
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<LI> WEB does not cater for non-standard Pascal
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programs. In particular, all identifiers are truncated to
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about eight characters.
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<LI> WEB formats the program output file into a form
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that is unreadable to humans.
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<LI> WEB does not provide an include facility. This
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was considered a feature essential for supporting macro
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<LI> WEB provides macros with at most one parameter.
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Knuth describes a hack that can extract a multiple parameter
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macro facility from a single parameter one, but it is
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<LI> WEB does not provide conditionals.
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<P>Most of these objections boiled down to two points:
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that WEB is far too specialized, and that Knuth's
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"Occam's Razor" had cut too
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far. What I wanted was a documentation system that employed
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all the same principles as WEB but was far more general.
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The result was FunnelWeb V1 which could process
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programs in any language or any combination of languages at
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the cost of setting the text in <SAMP>tt font</SAMP> instead
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of typesetting it in a language-specific way, as WEB does.
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<P>Originally, it was intended that FunnelWeb would be
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typesetter independent as well as language independent. It
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was intended that a format file consisting of a set of
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productions describing how the document file was to be
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formatted would be handed to FunnelWeb along with the input
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file. However, time pressures forced me to take the back
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door and hack up a TeX document file generator. In version
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3.2 an HTML generator was added.
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<A HREF="copyright.html">Copyright © Ross N. Williams 1992,1999. All rights reserved.</A><BR>
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