From: larry@tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Larry Maturo)
Subject: Re: Exporting comments, readable by a browser
Organization: Applied Research Labs, The University of Texas at Austin
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 12:33:58 GMT

In article <9209250710.aa13975@thama1.apgea.army.mil> Modula2 List <INFO-M2%UCF1VM.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>> In article <I> write:
>>
>>    No, it does not.  The Browser module reads the symbol file that is
>>    associated with the module.  If the symbol file does not exist, you
>>    cannot get the definition module.  (But, I believe it is also possible
>>    to get the information from the object module (type information would be
>>    lost, but function names are preserved)).
>
>Then, Dennis Brueni writes:
>
>> If the Oberon Browser read the source text rather than the symbol file,
>> a convention such as (** could be adopted to denote exported comment
>> blocks.  The empty comment (**), would have to be handled as a special
>> case, but that's easy to do.
>
>    The browser tool reads the symbol file produced by the compiler.
>    However, one could extend your idea easily to the compiler.  The
>    compiler _could_ export comment blocks to the symbol file, but I believe
>    that would make symbol files unecessarily large.
>
>    I have sat here and tried to come up with some way of storing
>    information needed to create an exported comment, but so far all has
>    deficiencies.  The most underdeveloped one I have involves creating a
>    new Write element (ExportedComment).  The ExportedComments could be
>    stored in a separate file and read by the browser.  The problem with the
>    idea at this point is that I have not been able (in the 3 minutes that I
>    have thought about it) to come up with a method to reliably
>    associate the comments with the code created by the
>    browser.
>
>    My only regret to this interesting thread is that this is my last day on
>    this job, and my internet connectivity will vanish at midnight tonight!
>    I should be able to get back on this list within 2 weeks, so I please
>    ask that _someone_ save the messages related to this thread.
>
>    thutt@thama1.apgea.army.mil
>    (I can be found, if you really want, through phipps@cis.ohio-state.edu)


The browser could just read the Oberon source file.  The browser for the version of
Oberon that runs under DOS and is just the compiler does this.  I don't know
that it keeps the comments, but I doubt that making it do that would be a major
change.  The biggest down side would be that you would get not just comments you
wanted but all comments.  Perhaps there should be a special comment syntax for 
comments you want a source code browser to output such as (*>Print this.<*)
This would keep the comment a normal comment for compilers.

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