Projects using Noweb

This page contains a list of projects that use the noweb literate-programming tool.

Kiyoshi Akima uses noweb to improve his own understanding of his programs, even for programs that probably will never be published, strictly for internal, exploratory, experimental use.
Rob Arthan and his colleages at Lemma 1 use noweb for general purpose programming in C, C++, ML and what have you. They also find that noweb is ideal for managing Java source. This code involves several packages, most of which contain many tiny (<10 line) classes, and the compiler requires that each class be in a separate Java source file. Noweb of course allows these to be combined, plus documentation, making it the bee's knees for solving this problem.
Fco. Ballesteros is using noweb to write Off, a distributed adaptable microkernel.
Daniel Bastos uses noweb to help himself understand his own programs and because he agrees with Knuth that a computer program is a literary work and should be written for humans to read.
Mark Bickford uses noweb to build language translators.
The BioConductor bioinformatics package is written in noweb markup using the R statistical language.
Darius Blasband has used noweb to produce sample scripts for RainCode, a tool for analysis and manipulation of COBOL programs. Some scripts can be viewed online.
Kenneth Brittain uses noweb with Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2. He has added a Tool to the IDE that launches Noweave with the current file and some standard options, such as -html. Similarly for Notangle. When he wants to see the work he hits, VC++ launches Noweave, and he keeps on working. Adding the generated C++ file to the project lets everything compile just fine.
Tom Burdick uses noweb for the internal documentation of Flying Crocodile's various software systems.
John Casey uses noweb to teach Computer Organization (a great way to document assembly language) and Algorithms.
Simon Clift has used Noweb for fluid dynamics and high-performance financial analysis programs with Perl, Python, C, C++, Fortran, shell scripts and even makefiles. Noweb (with LaTeX) enabled his last project to be fully cross-referenced from the business case to the design documents and through to the source code. Code was enhanced with diagrams and equations, and mixed-language source files could group (for example) a Python object with the Fortran code for the high performance sections.
Matt Craig uses noweb to teach astronomy as well as in his astronomy research. He came up with a cute trick for maintaining loop nests.
John Cummings has been using noweb to write a suite of programs to do partial-wave analysis of particle-physics data. He finds that noweb is easy to use and works well, and he really appreciates the language-independence.
Johannes Derwisch uses noweb to weave documentation into XLISP code
Mary Fernández used noweb to build UnQL a query language for structured data. Some people who got her source code were thrilled because ``nobody had ever given them documented code before.''
Leo Ferres uses noweb in his teaching—students in his programming course use noweb to write their homework.
Chris Fraser and Dave Hanson used noweb to write lcc retargetable C compiler (and the associated book).
Steve Furlong works as a programming consultant, apparently specializing in getting the program working when the other programmers have left the job. He uses noweb to help him understand and rewrite other's code.
Felix Gaertner has written the Pretzel prettyprinter generator using noweb.
Benoit Goudreault-Emond has heroically managed to get noweb to work with the Visual C++ programming environment. From FileView, Settings, you can set a `custom build step' to call notangle. You can add noweave to the Tools menu to get HTML.
Lou Glassy finds that literate programming debugging time for his programs. He doesn't find that it takes longer to write a literate program, but he does find that the program which emerges is (a) probably correct and (b) easy to debug if it is not correct. Lou has recently given a seminar on literate programming, with examples.
Carl Gregory has using noweb since 1993 at Tipton Cole & Company, primarily for continuing applications in Paradox for DOS, Microsoft Access, Visual BASIC, and HTML, all running under Windows 95. He edits the noweb file while viewing the weave with DVIWIN in another window, which works quite nicely. He sent me a short note about his experiences.
Dave Hanson used noweb to write his book of C Interfaces and implementations.
Pieter Hartel and Henk Muller used noweb to manage not only the C, SML, and code but also the mathematics in the book Functional C, Addison Wesley Longman, Harlow, UK, 1997, ISBN 0-201-41950-5.
Thomas Hauser has used noweb for developing a compressible fluid dynamics solver called COMPRES. He has used noweb since 1994 because of the simplicity of noweb and its language independence.
Rob Jasper uses noweb to interface a CAD system to Oracle using Lisp and CLOS.
David Kastrup writes literate programs, including a ``joiner'' for connected regions.
Terence Kelly uses noweb for all of his programming projects. For an example, see his report on an automotive traffic simulation model, which was done for a graduate class at the University of Michigan.
Bill Kossmann writes literate programs for the Paradox database product, including a Received-Not-Payable Accrual Writer
Gary Leavens especially likes using noweb for technical talks, in which he can be sure that the specifications he's showing the audience actually pass his specification language checker.
Chris Lee has used noweb for several projects, including writing a library which provides a real-time Scheme interpreter for use in directing the operation of several experimental robots.
Francky Leyn uses noweb for many things, of which the three most important are the ef2EF modeling environment and conversion engine for electronic-design formats, the Declarative Duck models for constraint programming in DONALD, and over 400 pages of structured documentation in bash and gawk.
Mark Lunt uses noweb for hobby projects (e.g., a sequencer for Linux). He writes ``When you only get to work on something every 6 months or so, it is very useful to be reminded exactly why you did things when you first wrote them. I also use noweb format files in my work as a statistician: the documentation chunks will become a paper, the code chunks perform the analyses that produce the results the paper is based on.''
Barry MacKichan is developing an XML back end for noweb. As of May, 1998, it is work in progress and not polished. (A trip to the bookstore suggests that XML is the latest hot thing.)
Robert T. McLay uses noweb for all different kinds of numerical software, mainly finite element programs. He has mixed FORTRAN, C and assembler together using noweb for a project to solve partial differential equations on distributed memory parallel computer.
Yotam Medini has released PED, a Path-EDiting package written in Gtk and noweb.
Phil Merkey uses noweb for coding samples in Unified Parallel C
Frank Miller uses noweb to build pk, an open-source PThreads kernel.
Mansour Moufid writes, "Noweb was perfect for a recent literate project for which I needed to use both Python and C in the same document. I've also used noweb for MATLAB code in the past. Noweb works on my Mac and Linux too... it's perfect."
Krishna Myeni uses noweb and LyX to write literate Forth programming tools and to explain a scientific program written in Forth. There are examples.
Balasubramanian Narasimhan has used noweb for statistical papers, Java code, and Diehard, a test bed for random-number generators.
Mark Naumann uses noweb for documenting "dot files" (.emacs, .twmrc, etc.), shell scripts (bash, tcl, itcl, ...), and for all newly written programs (C, C++, 68k/PPC/Coldfire assembler...).
Matthias Neeracher used noweb to write GUSI, a socket/POSIX library for the Apple Macintosh.
Michael Norrish is implementing a logical semantics for C in the HOL theorem prover.
The R statistical language uses noweb markup as a standard package in the in the form of the sweave function. The combination of R with literate programming using noweb has become an important tool in reproducible research, and, for example, the documentation for the BioConductor bioinformatics package is all written in noweb/sweave.
Norman Ramsey and Mary Fernandez used noweb to write New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit.
Ed Ream is the inventor of LEO, a folding outline editor for literate programs. LEO supports noweb and CWEB.
Anthony Rossini uses noweb for programming statistical procedures and simulations in XLispStat, Splus, and C.
Woodrow Setzer uses noweb to document statistical data analysis and other statistical projects such as simulation studies. This code is mostly S+, but also perl, awk, and a specialized dynamic model solver.
Mike Smith and his research group use noweb to document the Machine SUIF interfaces.
Jonathan Sobel uses noweb in his research in programing languages, including recycling continuations.
Alexandre Valente Sousa combines dot and noweb into the dotNoweb package, which helps maintain software systems under revision control.
stephen@lila.york.ac.uk uses noweb for the usual programming type stuff, but also for creating input for scientific programs. He uses noweb to create readable (by humans) input which is then tangled into what the program actually wants.
Volker Strumpen uses noweb to write the source code of the Porch compiler.
Andrew Swann has used Noweb to document some Maple code for the exceptional Lie algebra G2. He found that being able to use latex for the documentation was extremely useful because of the mathematical content.
Thomas Tensi has built PSINOWEB, a literate-programming tool for the Psion handheld. His tool is based on Noweb.
Terry Therneau of the Division of Biostatistics at the Mayo Clinic uses noweb to implement mixed effects Cox models. The algorithm is mathematically subtle, and it also requires sparse matrix concepts for reasonable speed, so standard comments were not enough.
David B. Thompson uses noweb for development of hydrologic models in FORTRAN.
Gabriel Valiente has written a book on graph algorithms using Noweb. He also runs a seminar on literate programming.
Tony Vignaux and some of his graduate students have been uing noweb for developing and documenting simulation programs in Simscript, ModSim and a new Java simulation package. Since the general form of a simulation program is reasonably standard (they all consist of collections of processes and resources, entities and queues, or events), they have found it useful to have a template noweb file which helps us in the program development as well. The philosophy is always to have a running simulation program from the beginning of the project.
Lee Wittenberg uses noweb for teaching and for many projects, including, for example, an SSEM simulator written in Java.
Peter Wolf has used noweb and S-plus to build a tool called REVWEB, which helps statisticians create reproducible data analyses.
Adrian Zimmer uses noweb to write literate perl scripts.
Monty Zukowski has implemented an Undo Framework in Python using noweb.