On Friday, July 8, 2016 at 10:26:45 AM UTC-4, Karsten Wolf wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, July 5, 2016 at 7:46:21 PM UTC+2, Propadovic Nenad wrote: > ... > >> I'd appreciate examples which *show* me why Leo is great. I really want >> to love it, honestly. I *tried* to find it extremely useful ten years ago, >> when I stumbled upon it after reading about the greatness of outlines >> (articles from Steve Litt). Yet by now I have the impression that it's most >> useful in a greenfield environment, when you have control of structure, >> anyway. Being a contractor, hopping from project to project, I almost never >> do such development. >> > > I'm using Leo for about a month now and know the feeling of really having > *tried*; my first Leo encounter was with mac-only Leo 1.5 more than 10 > years ago. > > After rediscovering it my personal Leo success story is a project (python > + bottle + bootstrap to replace a Filemaker app) which lay dormant for > several month and I was depressed every time I re-started development... it > was a mess. The main problem being diverging HTML templates. > > After I started unifying my templates with leo using cloned sections so > several pieces of every template are identical, overview came back and > while the project isn't pure fun it started making a lot of progress in the > last two weeks. . . . > > Despite the many uses let's not forget the origins of Leo: A literate > programming editor. > > For me it's the first time I'm *doing* instead of *reading about* literate > programming. With real projects. And it's increasing my productivity. And I > have to be cautious because Leo is capable of ugly accidents (see: Leo > highlights and annoyances as seen from a new user > <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/leo-editor/ip6Xwh8ctEY> ) > > And from my POV Literate Programming is still a field without a culture; > everybody does something which resembles some aspects of what Knuth wrote > about decades ago... but there aren't many agreed on structures and > procedures. So we are all dabbling in a 40 year old pioneer field which > brought us TeX & Metafont. > > That should not be all there is. >
I used Leo 4.3 and 4.4 extensively as source code management system and macro processor for writing utility programs in the form of Windows Script Host files. For those of you unfamiliar with this curious technology of Microsoft's, these files are XML, and a given Windows Script Host file can package multiple scripts in multiple languages as well as resources. Unless special measures are taken, it is necessary to modify the source code of a given script to suit the requirements of XML. I structured the Leo file so that no such modification was required, which made it easy for me to introduce a new script to the outline for me to use when writing a particular utility program. I also figured out how to use Leo to generate multiple Windows Script Host files, each of which could include any or all of the scripts. I imagine that reading this would have Edward Ream cringing, because I'm describing a technique he left behind years ago: I used Leo directives that remainin the current source code, though they are deprecated and I do not know that they still work: @root, @tangle, @untangle. These commands are a clear inheritance from Knuth's Literate Programming. I recall Edward writing that they allowed a naive user to corrupt files. I used them with care, as a solitary programmer, and they worked flawlessly for me. I was a solitary programmer, working on multiple machines, needing most of all to take my application development environment with me easily, adding to it as I went. Leo 4.3 and 4.4 and Python were extremely easy for me to install on the Windows XP computers I used, because all I needed was: CPython; Python-Win32; Leo; and my .LEO file. Leo 4.3 and 4.4 used the TK toolkit that is part of Python's Batteries Included, and for all the flaws of the release of TK bundled with Python, Edward's painstaking work had it running well, even if it looked plain and the limitations of TK were a drag on his efforts. Leo 4.3 and 4.4 gave me a first-rate outliner with clones, and once I put in the effort to build my WSH development environment, Leo took care of the stupid bookkeeping that would clutter my head with useless trivia of the sort that computers can handle perfectly. Add to that the ease of organizing to-do lists and development notes within the outline, and Leo helped me make myself a more effective worker. I don't know that I can offer a praise higher than that. In years since, my work life has had me using a Macintosh computer, for which Leo's GUI was not a perfect fit. I am hoping that recent improvements in window management at the MacOS level ease to work with current Leo, using the modern at-commands for file management. I pine for the industrial-strength outliner with clones in Leo! My work has me returning to more utility programming on the Windows side, so I hope to make use of Leo again. I need to figure out whether I can trust the @root/@tangle/@untangle directives that I used with Leo 4.3 and Leo 4.4. I need to wrap my head around the more complex requirements for current Leo: Qt and PyQt are required for current Leo, and on the Mac, one is either dealing with Apple's trailing-edge system Python, or a third-party Python and the headaches that represents. I need to wrap my head around the modern practice of running code from the development repository. I am not an expert at Git, and I need to dig up and follow the Keep It Simple Stupid recipe. My steadfast commitment to doing my work logged into my computer without Administrator Rights complicates this. I don't know that I will be able to come up with a Windows Script Host development environment as simple to use as the scheme I used with Leo 4.3 and 4.4, but I need to try. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
