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Things I want from a code oriented document authoring system:
1. Linear readability, so prose, code, and output is unified in one file
2. Diffability, so the end result works well in code review workflows
3. Good integration with code related tools: build systems, indenters, auto complete, type throwback, syntax highlighting
6. Good syntax highlighting and navigation for the prose, and a pleasant syntax to go with it.
7. Support for threading together multiple sessions, possibly in different languages, in the same document.
4. Cross language support for all of the above
5. Ability to emit to multiple backends: jupyter notebooks, web pages, late, etc
6. Good syntax highlighting and navigation for the prose, and a pleasant syntax to go with it.
7. Support for threading together multiple sessions, possibly in different languages, in the same document.
I think we'll soon have a system that does everything except 4 and 7.
It's OCaml specific, using extension points for embedding markup, and expect tests for capturing output.
And each document is like a single toplevel session. But other than that, it should do the job.
Here's a nice small idea that came up: how do you make graphical output work. You want it to be diffable and reviewable, after all.
So, just dump a textual representation of the data to be graphed into the file. Then the data can be diffed, and reviewed.
And your web backend can convert that into a pretty picture.
