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<a name="INTRODUCTION-to-FWEB"></a>
<h2 class="chapter">1 INTRODUCTION to <small>FWEB</small></h2>

<a name="index-Literate-programming"></a>
<p><small>FWEB</small> is a system for <em>literate programming</em>.  It enables one to
maintain both documentation and source code in a single place (the
<code>web</code> file), and to explain the code in terms of a <em>web</em> of
very small fragments.  Because <small>FWEB</small> is intimately integrated with
TeX, one gains many advantages such as book-quality typesetting and
extensive cross-referencing facilities.  A simple example program is
described in <a href="Structure.html#Structure">Structure</a>.
</p>

<p><small>FWEB</small> was originally intended for scientific programming (the &rsquo;F&rsquo;
stands for <small>FORTRAN</small>), and is in wide use in that arena; however, it
has much broader applicability.  It is an extension of Knuth&rsquo;s WEB
system that handles the specific languages C, C++, Fortran (both F77 and
F90), <small>RATFOR</small>, and (in a limited fashion) TeX itself.  It also
attempts to implement a WYSIWYG language-independent mode as well as a
(closely-related but not identical) verbatim &lsquo;language&rsquo;.  <em>The
language-independent features are highly experimental</em> and are not
recommended. 
</p>
<p>The origins and philosophy of literate programming are described in the
very enjoyable book by D. E. Knuth, <cite>Literate Programming</cite> (Center for
the Study of Language and Information, Leland Stanford Junior
University, 1992).
</p>
<p>Knuth&rsquo;s original WEB 
<a name="index-WEB"></a>
was written in Pascal, and it formatted Pascal code.
Silvio Levy introduced <small>CWEB</small>, 
<a name="index-CWEB"></a>
a WEB system written in C for C.  <small>FWEB</small> 
<a name="index-FWEB"></a>
is a
(by now, substantial) modification of version 0.5 of <small>CWEB</small> that was
graciously supplied by Levy.  It also borrows various ideas from the
works of Ramsey and Briggs on language-independent webs.
</p>
<p>The original WEB&rsquo;s worked with Plain TeX.  More recently, many users
have turned to Lamport&rsquo;s LaTeX because of its ease of use and
higher-level features.  Excellent and extensive development of LaTeX has been
accomplished, as described by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin, <cite>The
LaTeX Companion</cite> (Addison&ndash;Wesley, Reading, MA, 1994). 
The present version of <small>FWEB</small> is intended to be used with
LaTeX (LaTeX2e, in particular); Plain TeX is no longer supported.
</p>
<table class="menu" border="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="History.html#History" accesskey="1">History</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">History of literate programming.
</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Features.html#Features" accesskey="2">Features</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">Special features of <small>FWEB</small>.
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fweb-doc 1.62-13 / usr / share / doc / fweb / html-info / Intro.html
