Scribble: closing the book on ad hoc documentation tools

  • Authors:

  • Matthew Flatt;Eli Barzilay;Robert Bruce Findler

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Utah and PLT, Salt Lake City, UT, USA;Northeastern University and PLT, Boston, MA, USA;Northwestern University and PLT, Evanston, IL, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Scribble is a system for writing library documentation, user guides, and tutorials. It builds on PLT Scheme's technology for language extension, and at its heart is a new approach to connecting prose references with library bindings. Besides the base system, we have built Scribble libraries for JavaDoc-style API documentation, literate programming, and conference papers. We have used Scribble to produce thousands of pages of documentation for PLT Scheme; the new documentation is more complete, more accessible, and better organized, thanks in large part to Scribble's flexibility and the ease with which we cross-reference information across levels. This paper reports on the use of Scribble and on its design as both an extension and an extensible part of PLT Scheme.